


Press Play

by HiatusMusings



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-01-05 11:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiatusMusings/pseuds/HiatusMusings
Summary: Bellamy started forward with Emori, silence from inside meant it was either empty, or someone had already slit the cockroach’s throat. What he hadn’t expected was Murphy bursting back out of the door, eyes wide, face pale, and hands outstretched.Bellamy stopped, staring at him, hands already moving to the handle of the gun clipped to his belt.“Murphy?” he whispered, the fear on the man’s face evident.“She made it,” he responded, his voice strangled, "Clarke's alive."***Spacekru make it back to the ground, a year and seven days late. But what they find, isn’t anything like they expect. Now, lead only by her recorded radio calls Bellamy has to find the woman that built a paradise on the last green spot on earth, only to have disappeared into the very valley that saved her.





	1. Hit the ground running

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to have too many season 5 AU’s in my head so decided to write this one down to make some room.
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy.

The Ring: Six Years, Seven Days.

The shuttle had seemed bigger when they were going up to the Ring six years ago. Now it was crammed with the same seven people, but was full of all the things they’d pleaded with Raven to allow in.

Monty’s algae farm kit made it on, although when Murphy had complained that if the food was fucked down there after Praimfaya he’d rather die than live the rest of his life on a diet of green. Bellamy couldn’t quite muster up the fight to contradict him. 

Echo had negotiated her sword, since it could be plastered against the wall and tied down and had convinced everyone that if they really, truly had to start over in the green spot, something to cut down trees and kill animals might be helpful. Murphy started nodding enthusiastically. 

Harper and Emori had simply worn all the layers of clothes they could find, ignoring Raven’s pointed looks as they struggled to snap the seatbelts over their multiplied frames. Of course, Raven’s tools and bits of spare electronics were given purchase. She shot down Murphy’s yells as she tossed out the still for moonshine, with a terse reminder that if he had a problem with her orders he could stay on the Ring. 

She didn’t say anything when Bellamy walked in and sat down in his chair, the only personal item in his possession were four working data pads and viewers. They contained the books he’d found comfort in as the hours passed, slower than all the others in his life. If humanity was starting over, they would need to know where they began. 

“Knowing our collective history didn’t stop us from leaping into war last time,” Raven said to him as he watched the archive copy over.

“I’m downloading Catcher in the Rye, not the Art of War,” he bit back. He was thoroughly done with her attitude, although his hadn’t been much better. Every day over year five had been pulling a thread in him, a broken promise to the sister he’d left behind whispering in his ears.

“Fine, but strap it down, I don’t need a viewer hitting me in the face when I’m trying to keep us all from dying,” she said, and he nodded, depositing them into the hold, already stuffed full of the remaining medical supplies. 

It was quiet when they all strapped in. Raven kept clearing her throat, her fingers shaky on the controls. He knew he needed to reach out, give a little. 

“Raven,” Bellamy said quietly, “thank you.”

She looked over at him, her eyes filled with tears, before a small smile graced her face.  
“Ladies, gentleman, and Murphy,” she said, an annoyed snort issuing from Murphy’s seat, “it was a pleasure surviving with you. How about we give living another go?” And with that, they broke away from the ring, and hurtled down, one more time, into the unknown.

***  
Bright. That was that was something he’d forgotten about Earth. The brightness, the smells, the sounds. The seven of them were stumbling about, giddy at surviving the landing, at the miracle that this place was real and not a mass-hallucination mirage outside the Ring’s windows. He turned to look over at Raven, to congratulate on another awesome job, but she was frowning.

“What is it?” He asked, tromping over, feeling the heaviness in his limbs from the gravity not matching perfectly on the GoSci for too long. Her arms were crossed as she stared into the tree line. They’d landed in a copse of tall grass, surrounded by trees, the leaves swaying gently in the wind. It was a beautiful day on the ground, but he had a lot of experience with beautiful days turning bloody.

“We hit three hours ago, do you see anyone else?” She asked, chewing her lip, dark eyes roaming the tree line. Bellamy felt a prickle go up his back, and kicked himself for not thinking about it. “Bell, where are the people from the bunker?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sighing, “how about we go find them?”

The others stopped their meandering, apparently the celebration was over. Everyone took up their packs, and looked toward Echo for a headway. “Anything look like a path to you?” He asked her, long hair drifting in the breeze. It had been a long time since the wind was a factor in their life. 

She eyed the ring of trees critically, turning slowly on her heels. He wondered if she felt strange to be ungainly on the ground now, the Azgeda spy out of practice with taking the measure of the land. Finally she pointed one long, slender arm to the west. 

“There, the break in the trees looks unnatural to me. Could be a path, even if it was from before the wave.”

“Good as any direction,” Monty said, taking the lead jauntily, the grin on his face infectious as he grabbed Harper’s hand pulling her forward. 

It only took a few miles to remind him that however much the sun was beautiful, it also made it muggy, and hot, and sticky. They were swatting bugs on their skin, only Monty able to keep a positive attitude yelling back at them “if the bugs are back, the things that eat the bugs could be too!” 

“So are the things that eat the humans,” Murphy grumbled, using the back of his hand to wipe the sweat away. 

“Relax John,” Emori said, catching up to him, “you know I’ll shove you down so I can get away if a bear comes at us.”

“I’m really glad we worked on ‘us’ babe” he cut back. Bellamy shook his head at the exchange, droplets of sweat hanging off his hair. Among the many good things about being back on the ground would be the chance to get away from their constant bickering or fucking. 

At least Monty and Harper kept it sweet in public, and Echo preferred the lowest level of PDA possible which was honestly perfectly fine with Bellamy, even though he thought he remembered he enjoyed it a different way. What they had, it wasn’t like the other couples, it was simply a friendship with benefits, one Echo shared with Raven too. 

He spun out the miles and hours watching the odd trail beneath his feet, tuning out the comments of his family. He was so lost in his own thoughts, mostly occupied with wishing Clarke could have been part of this, that he nearly ran into Harper. 

“Oh my god,” she breathed, and he looked up to see, a village? No, it was just a few structures sitting forgotten in a small field. He squinted into the sun, shading his eyes with his hands as he took in the little buildings, circled around a few old wooden tables and a fire pit. It shouldn’t raise the hair on the back of his neck, but it did anyway. 

“This isn’t right,” Echo said next to him, confirming the growing anxiety he felt. 

Murphy turned around to face them up ahead, “looks pretty nice to me,” he said, walking backwards, “looks like we’re not sleeping on dirt tonight.”

“This isn’t a place that’s been abandoned for six years Murphy,” Echo said softly, her large brown eyes scanning the area, “this place has been cared for, recently enough for a fire pit to not be overgrown, and pathways to the doors to be cleared. Someone was living here, someone may still be living here.”

The seven of them stilled in a group, each taking more cautious scans of the area, before Murphy walked purposefully up to the door of a squat, square building, pale, colorful flags still floated listlessly around them. 

“Murphy, don’t-” Monty started to say, but before he burst through the door, he slowed, cocked at eyebrow at them, and knocked on the door sharply three times, the third cracking the frame as the door groaned inward.

“Look, we’ve been invited,” Murphy said, grinning wryly back at them, Monty looked skyward as though wishing for his algae lab. It had been off-limits to Murphy, one of the few rules their erstwhile companion had followed. 

Bellamy started forward with Emori, silence from inside meant it was either empty, or someone had already slit the cockroach’s throat. What he hadn’t expected was Murphy bursting back out of the door, eyes wide, face pale, and hands outstretched.

Bellamy stopped, starting at him, his hands on the gun at his side. 

“Murphy?” he whispered, the fear on the man’s face evident. 

“She made it,” he responded, his voice strangled, "Clarke's alive."

***

They searched for Clarke for three days. 

The second Murphy had walked into the old gas station, he’d been faced with his own portrait. And Bellamy’s. And Raven’s. All of them. Wasn’t much of a leap to realize what had happened. 

The little building was filled to the brim with Clarke. It wasn’t just the drawings, it was the keepsakes she’d lined up on shelves, stacks of papers outlining maps and calculations Bellamy couldn't begin to understand, blankets messily draped around a cot shoved into the corner, a few thin shirts peeked out from under it. A table in the back with long scratches where she’d prepared food. The air didn’t smell of her, it was stale, enclosed. His eyes kept landing on the lines of dust they’d made on the table as they searched for some clue among her papers.

He’d left her to burn, to die. He had come to terms with that knowledge. It was tipping his world on the axis to discover that wasn’t quite true. She may very well have burned, but she’d also survived. 

They screamed her name, in those hours after Murphy’s discovery, wandering around the encampment, before Echo had discovered the trail south of the little cabins. He’d sprinted through, ignoring the burning in his lungs, the panic that was making his vision tunnel. They ran after him, nearly half a mile before bursting into a clearing and discovering the second impossible thing of the day.

A town. Built in a circular pattern in another clearing, this one stretching miles in front of them. They halted, listened, the sweat dripping down his collar, his eyes darting around trying to spot a slip of blonde hair. 

Nothing. They started opening doors to the cabins. All empty, except for bed frames and a two chairs each. The more cabins they stepped into, the more sophisticated the carpentry became. 

“She got better,” Harper muttered when they entered the tenth one, or twentieth, running her hand down a bassinet. 

It was the third day they’d been back on the ground and Bellamy was hoarse from screaming her name. He felt as though it was the only thing he could say.

“It’s clay,” Monty said from beside her, staring at the wall. “I get what she was making the cabins out of, this has to be made from the sand from the dead zone surrounding the valley, but the roofs…” he trailed off, slipping one of the tight vines between his fingers. 

The roofs appeared to be tightly woven greenery, opaque enough for light to filter down, eliminating the need for more than one circular cut window in the clay, but during a sudden down-pour when Bellamy had slipped into the nearest cabin, he discovered they were watertight as well. 

There were hundreds of cabins. “Enough for the bunker population, plus some,” Raven said, crossing her arms tightly against her chest. They were all on edge. “She planned for 1200 Wonkru, plus us and whatever births occurred, and could occur in the next decade.”

Bellamy had to put his head between his knees hearing that news. They discovered the food storage the next day, Emori tripping over the handles to a cellar that had started to disappear into the grass.

A week after being back on the ground they circled around the fire pit, back at the small clearing Clarke had, or did, live in and stared at each other.

Echo breathed out softly, closing her eyes, refusing to look at him. That had been routine this week. “We’ve searched the entire town, and a five mile radius around it, what’s next?” 

“Polis,” Raven said softly, “we need to get Wonkru out of the bunker.”

Bellamy’s head snapped up from staring at the flames. “You think they’re still in there?”

Raven stared at him, those dark eyes hard as flint in the light. “I don’t think it, I know it,” she pulled a book out of the backpack. “I went through the papers, the drawings of Polis, the rubble. It wasn’t just pictures. She has calculations on the back, details you only see when you lay them all out. She had a plan to burst through the rubble, to the door.”

The fire crackled in the night, but he couldn’t feel the heat from the flames. 

“She had?” He said, the words twisting on this tongue. Tears gathered in Raven’s eyes, she pulled on her lower lip with her teeth. 

“We need to go back to the shuttle tomorrow. I need to collect the leftover hydrazine. It’s what she was waiting for.”

Bellamy curled his hands around the log he sat on, wondering if her hands had been there before. 

“Well, she waited long enough. We’ll go at dawn.”

***  
It took another week of walking to get to Polis. He wondered how heartbreaking it would have been to find it alone, hurt and scared. They arrived, thirsty and burnt by the sun, but at least they were together. 

The silence that greeted them meant that no one called out her name. Raven staggered around, finding each bowl of detonation material exactly as Clarke had drawn it. They drew the lines of explosives outward according to the calculations Raven had double checked, eyes widening at the accuracy of what Clarke had figured out. She struck the match.

Afterwards, the smoke cleared, and Octavia stepped through the rubble, determined and composed, her people following after her. It didn’t take a genius to understand what a year late and over populated would mean, how it would reshape Octavia. They had theorized what it might mean for the bunker, their late arrival, on nights they couldn't stop themselves, when the moonshine pulled to dark corners of their imaginations. He hadn't particularly liked any of Raven's ideas. Turn out she was more right that he'd ever thought. 

Octavia was ‘Bloodriena’ now. 

But she still embraced him like the little girl he remembered, tears streaking lines down the red on her face. Abby and Kane stumbled out after her, thin, worn, and fearful. He told Octavia and Abby at the same time about Clarke, what she had built, the answers they didn’t have on where she could be now. He wasn’t sure he’d ever forget Abby’s screams as she learned her child had been left out on the planet alone for six years, and now was suddenly vanished into thin air.

“We need to find her,” he said hands on his hips, looking at the woman his sister had become. 

Octavia’s eyes narrowed, her shoulders straightened. “From what you’re saying of this village Clarke survived just fine on her own. I need you now, big brother. It’s time to bring Wonkru home.”

***

It took just two weeks after leading Wonkru back through the desert, for his family on the ring to scatter amongst the population. 

Monty directed the farming, ambling up and down the rows of vegetables and starches, Clarke's papers tucked into his back pocket, muttering to himself and touching the long delicate reeds reverently. 

Murphy had seemed to walk into the the building Clarke had built to be a cafeteria, and never left. He was suddenly in charge of the prep room, creating recipes that could easily feed nearly a thousand. For now, the food was doled out cafeteria-style, large batches of meals overseen by him. 

Emori and Raven were making plans for generators and looking at ways to create motorbikes, the tires built for the sand and mess of moss on the ground. 

Echo and Indra had become an unlikely team, leading small groups to the surrounding streams to fish, and set traps for the small animals that roamed. They used the designs Clarke had drawn, prototypes scattered haphazardly in the forest line, enough that the children were kept away for now. 

Harper had joined Abby in the medical unit, quietly steadying the older woman’s shaking hands, whispering with Kane as he doled out a meager dose of the medications she’d become addicted to. Kept out of the pits solely for the medical knowledge she could provide and leave behind.

For himself, he seemed unneeded in every role stuck. Octavia hadn’t given him a job, and he hadn’t seemed to fall into one the way the others had. He spent most of his time in Clarke’s home, trying to put the story together. He sifted through the portraits, the diagrams, the maths and odd paragraphs. She wrote about the odd crops that came up, the fish that tasted wrong, the way the storms seem to electrify the sky.

He saw drawings of her face, covered in blisters and sores from the radiation, others that showed one eye cloudy, but then later, healed. It wasn’t until she kept making notes about recordings that he began to search beneath the floorboards, and found it. 

Cassette tapes. Old, old, old school. Boxes of them, lined up, organized meticulously. He thought he might just start crying when he chose one at random, placed it into the machine in the first box he’d found, and her voice filled the room.

_Bellamy, it’s day 480 and I’m walking back to my house now, covered in clay, again,_ her laugh broke the sob in him that had been building since the day they had landed._but I’m too tired to clean it off, i’ll just eat some of the cornmeal and pass out. But wanted to let you know those birds came back, they have a pretty song but only sing it at dusk. I’ll try to record it next time. I think you’d like it._

That was it, so ordinary, a little blip in her day. He waited, holding his breath as the tape clicked over. _Hey Bellamy, day 481, I found a new stream on the western edge, I’ll have to be careful though-_ over and over, he let it play out for an hour, getting all the way up to day 525. Octavia slipping into the room without him noticing.

“Hey Bell,” she said, sliding into the chair next to him. The red leathers cracking on her shoulders. He turned to look at her, his neck tensing at the action, he’d been bent over the speaker for longer than he thought. She tilted her chin at the device. “Find any clues to where she is now?”

“No,” he said, feeling itchy at her presence. He and Octavia hadn’t had much time alone. She was busy leading Wonkru, and didn’t have much time for the brother who’d spent the majority of the last six years thinking about her. 

It made him angry in a petulant way he wasn’t proud of. Or maybe it was the fact that every time he started ambling towards the tree line the guard unit seemed to follow him, and they only followed one person’s orders.

“It’s so strange. For her to put this work in, then leave,” she said idly, glancing around the space, he didn’t miss how her eyes traced the papers that held her own face, the mask from the conclave on them.

“Then why are you keeping me here, O? I should be looking for her, bringing her home.” He asked, his fingers hovering over the old play button, waiting to press it down and continue listening to a ghost. “Do you still hate her for taking the bunker?”

She didn’t seem to want to look at him, her shoulders still and tilted back, chin held high. But then she let out a slow breath, seeming to deflate, the mask of Bloodriena falling away, and fatigue playing across her features.

“That’s a shitty thing to say Bell.”

“Is it true?” He pressed, the desperation in his voice clear.

She paused, spreading out a few of the drawings until she found the one he knew was under there, Octavia as she had been at the drop ship, looking at butterflies. “She was always so far ahead of us. I hated the choices she made, but even then, she knew that kindness can kill more than it saves in the end.”

“She was kind,” Bellamy whispered, thinking of Atom, of Clarke humming a tune as she slid her knife into his neck.

Octavia looked up at him, those large green eyes dull in the light. “I don’t hate her. If she’s still alive I may be the one person on this planet that truly understands what it took to be her.”

The words settled on him, and he could suddenly see the toll becoming Bloodreina had taken on her, the parts of herself that would never come back after killing her people to save them. “So then why won’t you let me go O? You don’t need me here, that much is very clear.”

“Nothing is clear, Bell” she said angrily, swiveling around and leaping out of the chair, the drawing scattering down to the floor. “You think I don’t want to leave and go look for her too?” She snapped, her fingers grasping for a sword hilt that wasn’t there. Instinctual for her now. He leaned back, confused. The moment they’d broken them out Octavia had been consumed by the needs of Wonkru, he didn’t begrudge her that, only the feeling that he was suddenly part of an army with no enemy.

“I didn’t know you wanted that,” he said softly.

She groaned, her hands on her hips looking down and he was suddenly struck with the pose, knowing it was the same one he made very often, usually when Murphy was being an idiot.

“I’ve spent six years under the ground, pacing the same halls, staring at the same shitty pieces of cult propaganda, trying to keep the last humans from killing each other and cutting out pieces of my own soul to do so, and you assume I wouldn’t like a nice fucking walk in the woods to find the woman that saved my brother’s life?”

“O, I-” he began but she held up a hand. 

“I get it, it’s inhuman what I did, what we did to survive but I’m still human, I’m still here Bell. I bore it, so they wouldn’t have to. Just like Clarke. You always found a way to forgive her. Why can’t you do the same for me?” She softened at the end, a small gathering of tears at her eyes. 

It took the breath from his lungs to hear her put it so plainly. “You don’t need my forgiveness for that O. It was force them to live or watch them starve. I get it. I don't know if I would have done anything differently”

She sighed, “not for the bunker,” she said softly, “for what I did before it.”

He snapped his head up, looking at her face, his heart thudding dully at the memory of her fists hitting his face after Pike executed Lincoln. 

“It’s been a long time since then little sister,” he said slowly, “but thank you.” His lips quirked up. “If you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you.” Her lower lip trembled slightly, but seemed to regain control of herself. Nodding sharply at the exchange. 

He wondered at this woman. The sister he had known on the ground had rolled along the waves of her emotions, loudly, outrageously dancing in the storm of them. Who was he to blame her for the outbursts that rattled others around them, when for so long she had to be still, small, contained. As Bloodreina, she’d had no choice but to measure herself. Keep the raging fire of who she could be confined to the terrible justice on the sharp side of her sword.

“You’ve just seemed, angry, since we got to the valley, I couldn’t help but wonder if you’d enjoyed a life without me on the ring.” Octavia said, raising her eyes tentatively. 

“No, god,” he replied, getting up slowly, moving towards her until she let him pull her into a hug. “I’m sorry O, I’m just,” he tightened his grip on her, “it won’t feel like I’m back until I find her, whatever is left to find, I guess.”

“I know,” she said, stepping back hastily. “I came to tell you, you can take whoever you need if they want to go, I’d rather she be found so we know, instead of wondering if the feeling on the back of my neck is her, or a different problem.”

It still irked him that she thought of Clarke as some kind of threat, but he knew the whispered word of Wanheda still flew about the Wonkru people, and a legend can be something people cling to when laws are to their dissatisfaction. 

“Thanks,” he said finally, watching her raise an eyebrow, “Clarke would be proud of you, for what you did.”

“I don’t think proud is exactly the right word,” she said tightly. “Now go away, find the Princess, or Wanheda, or whatever.”

“Yeah, I just need to talk to Spacekru,” he said, a smile on his face, as she rolled her eyes at the moniker Wonkru had given the seven of them. “I bet they can’t wait.”

***

Turns out, they could most definitely wait.

He had gone to Monty and Harper first, but instead of helping them pack bags, Monty was ready with carefully wrapped rations for him, enough for nearly a month, more if he caught his own game.

He didn’t even have a chance to work up to anger, before seeing that Harper had moved one of the carved bassinets to their cabin. 

He left them with hugs, Monty assuring him that if he didn’t check in at least once a day they would be after him, pregnancy or not. 

He wound his way to Murphy and Emori next, but the two of them were with a bunch of Wonrku teenagers, preparing the meal for that evening’s dinner. Joking, laughing, at ease. Murphy regaling the teens with gory stories and tales of bravery that were most certainly performed by Raven and Echo. He suddenly knew, he couldn’t ask this of them either. Murphy was softer that the barbs he wore, few noticed the way his hand reached out to Emori’s every few minutes, shaking slightly.

Echo, the former spy, his sometime lover on the ring, it wasn’t her answer that surprised him, it was why. When he approached her cabin he found her around the back, talking softly with a very old man.

They appeared to know each other, and when she left his side, she explained that it was an elder from her village, from before she became Nia’s child spy. She seemed folded in on herself, trying to explain that she hadn’t realized any of her old kru had survived praimfaya, and the man had memories of her from before. 

She looked away when she said it, and his heart broke a little when he realized that even after all the time they’d spent together, she still hadn’t trusted him enough to reveal this part of herself. He didn’t even ask her to join him then.

His family was unraveling like a spool of thread running down a hill, and he was afraid, he realized, afraid of what it might mean to make this journey alone. 

***

“Raven, I don’t understand,” Bellamy said criss crossing the small mechanical shop. “What do you mean you’re not coming with?” 

Somehow over the span of just a few weeks, she had transformed the space Clarke had created for her, with a simply drawn black bird on the door, into what he could only imagine was the inside of Raven’s brain come to life. 

Bit and pieces of tech, from remnants from the Ring, to broken pieces off the bunker, to whatever Clarke had scavenged from her years of falling into old safe houses and bunkers. Now she leaned against one of the tables covered with tools, her eyes brighter than he’s seen in a long time, her hair down around her shoulders instead of tightly pulled back. 

“I mean exactly that Bellamy,” she said, “whatever you have to do, I want you to go and do it. But I can’t,” she took a breath, and he saw it tremor through her, “I can’t do this again. I need to be here, for a while. I need to be just a mechanic again.”

Bellamy stepped back from his friend, his found sister, feeling like he’d been slapped. “Raven, I thought we were in this together,” he whispered, “you said you were with me.”

“And we were up there,” she said softly. “You needed a co-pilot, you needed what Clarke had been and I did my best, truly I did but,” she cut off, looked down, the edges of her torn fingernails digging into her arm, unable to continue.

“Clarke is out there,” he said, hating himself for the anger he felt, hating himself for what he would say next. “If it was you, she would go find you.”

He saw her recoil, and the pit in his stomach deepened. 

“I know,” Raven said, her arms tightening around her waist. “You think I don’t know that? You think you’re the only one who spent six years trying to do what Clarke would have done?”

Bellamy looked away, out a window to see a few Wonkru children cautiously making their way across a field. The wildflowers looking more at ease than they did in the sun. He swallowed, the lump in his throat didn’t go away. 

“Bellamy, you’re not the only person who spent nights staring at the airlock, wondering if it was the better way to go,” she said softly. 

He looked up at her, startled by the admission. “I never,” he began the denial rising to his lips, but he stopped when she shook her head sharply, her eyes narrowing, lips tightening. Raven Reyes didn’t suffer liars. 

“Shut up,” she snarled. “I watched you dismantle yourself that first year. I watched what leaving her behind did to you, I saw how you looked at me for telling you there was no more time, to close the door, that’s what I bore, you asshole. And to find out, to find out we didn't just kill her, we abandoned her...Bell, I can't face it if she's...”

Tears tracked down her face now, she had stepped closer to him, staring up at him. Guilt clouded his mind, he thought he’d hid the worst of it. How wrong he had been.

“I can’t go searching for Clarke, just to see her dead body. I can’t go searching for her to find her fine and staying away because she chose to. I can’t grieve her again Bellamy,” Raven said, pressing a hand against his chest. 

“What if it’s the third option?” He asked, pleading for her to understand, to see what he saw. “What if she’s out there, and she’s hurt, and she can’t make it back?”

Raven sighed, her shoulders slumping down. “That’s why you should go without me. I’m not any good out there, tromping around in vines and uneven ground. Look around you Bellamy. Look at what she gave us. The food that's already stored. There are generators waiting to be fixed. There are a thousand projects Clarke left for me, me!” Raven raised her hands, letting them fall to slap against her slim hips. “If she’s alive, she wanted me to stay here,” she said quietly. “She would want me to help Abby out of the hole she’s dug herself into. She would want me to fix the things she didn’t know how to. I’m doing what Clarke wanted me to do in the world she built. I’m being the mechanic.”

Bellamy could feel the panic begin to rise, for six years he’d look forward to when he wasn’t trapped in space, responsible for lives that were not his own, and now the idea that he might be free of that responsibility made it hard to breathe.

Despite the anger in her eyes, Raven suddenly had her arms wrapped around him, the sharp bird on her chest digging into his. He brought his own arms up around her. 

“Okay,” he whispered. “I’m sorry Raven, I shouldn’t have,” he paused unsure. “I didn’t know you felt like this.”

“Oh gods Bellamy, I don’t blame you,” she said shakily breaking her grasp around his waist and stepping away. “Look,” she turned around to the table, handing him a pack, “I’ve digitized her tapes. Every one one of them, put them in order according to the labels she made, but I’ll be honest, her writing was getting pretty sloppy at the end. I’m not sure everything is correct, but it’s solar powered so you don’t have to worry about batteries or anything.” She sniffled, wiping the tears off her face hastily, tucking the hair back behind her ears. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, “for everything Raven. For being you, up there, that’s who made it possible.”

She took a big shaky breath, but a smile broke across her face, “Yeah, I know, I’m awesome.”

A knock on her door broke whatever spell there was, and Raven called out for them to come in. A Wonkru man opened the door cautiously, a small child holding onto his hand. 

“What can I do for you?” Raven said, walking toward them, and Bellamy saw her eyes light up as she held her palm out for the small device in the child’s hand. “Oh, this is interesting-” she said and Bellamy took that as his cue to leave. 

She didn’t call out goodbye as he left, but he heard the easy peal of laughter carry through on the way out, and while it hurt in a strange way to leave her behind, something loosened. 

Raven’s happiness wasn’t on him. He wasn’t responsible for Octavia, if anything she now saw him as her responsibility. His family had scattered among her people like they were the missing puzzle pieces in the picture Clarke had created. He wondered if he was supposed to fit too, or if like herself, she had taken both of them off the board on purpose.

He was unmoored and heading into the woods. Into the unknown. He was on his own, well almost, he reminded himself. The clang of the audio reader against his back keeping in time with his steps. He walked a mile until he was at the outskirts of the village, the last of the homes she had built receding. She’d created a paradise. He was leaving it. But he wasn’t going alone.

He took out the device, clipping it onto the front of his shirt, the speaker a little small and removed but Clarke’s voice rang out clearly. 

_“Bellamy, you’re not going to believe what I found. Or you will because you’ll be giving me grief when I show you that I’ve been recording my radio calls. But this whole talking to you without an answer for the last year is driving me a little nutty, and I need to give myself a reason to keep doing it, so, I figure if I record it, then that’s a rational thought process. It’s kind of cool though, the one year anniversary of you flying off I find this recorder and all these tapes. Something special for day 365.”_

Bellamy paused it. Her voice was teasing, but he could hear the shaking to it. He could always see when she was putting on the brave mask. Pretending she knew all the right steps, when really all along she was just dancing through the gaps.

He turned to look behind him one more time, through the gnarled branches he could still see the bright clearing, the sounds of children laughing. Clarke had found it, had made it a heaven. An Eden. Why had she left it? He looked away, into the darkened woods, the vines that made excellent shelters on homes when cut at the root, twisted and thwarted the sun as they strung themselves through the trees, blocking out the light. He’d have to get above them to power the solar battery eventually. He took another step into the growing shade. He pressed play.

_Day 366, Hey Bell. So, today I discovered that I’m still a terrible terrible mechanic. And by that I mean I started a very small fire. Trial, ‘blow up rocks round three is a no-go.’ But you could have guessed that right? Don’t worry, I’m not testing the batches on the stuff near the bunker, don’t want to weaken the structure at all. Radiation levels are still off the charts and there’s some crazy weather going on outside the valley. I figure-”_

He hadn’t followed her that time outside the gates of Arkadia. She had needed him to watch over their people, breaking his heart in the process. But now their people had Octavia, and they weren’t really his, not anymore. He was free in a way he’d never been. Free to go after what had always eluded him. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. So he let the sound of her voice carry him forward, into the unknown.


	2. Talk Me Through It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy walks, Clarke talks

_Fish pasta. Fish stew. Fish bread. Ha, got you on that last one. I don’t know how to make bread, yyyyet._

Clarke drawled in that early morning way of hers, something he’d never had a chance to really notice before. 

_“Today, it’s grilled fish. With a side of something I’m going to call a carrotinni. Which is what it looks like when a Zuchinni comes out orange. But it dries really well so I’m telling myself it’s super delicious and oh my god I hate farming. It’s the worst Bell. Make Monty come down first._

He smiled, she’d been chattering on and on about the food that day. Day 392. Day 3 for him trekking his way through the valley. Since the year mark when the recordings began she’d told him about the process for trying to farm the odd forms of vegetables in the valley. The radiation twisting the plant DNA into some interesting and alarming results. 

He’d taken to radioing back Monty after particularly interesting tidbits, one time it was in a panic after she casually mentioned thinking she’d made something poisonous and he wanted to warn Monty away from a certain block of rows on the far southern end. 

_Anyways, I finished up planting this row, if I don’t move off the grass soon I’ll just end up sleeping out here in the field. Not the first time it’s happened but-_

The tape paused, and so did Bellamy, looking down at where he’d clipped that speaker onto his jacket pocket. The audio didn't cut out, he could still hear the birds and leaves in the wind that existed in Clarke’s moment seeping through, different to the dry, heavy air of the lower parts of the valley he was traveling through, looking for a sign, any sign of her.

_Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you hanging there, just saw you guys go by, it’s easier at night to spot you. Whatcha up to? Is Murphy driving you insane? You have my permission to lock him in my old solitary cell. I wonder if they scrubbed the drawings off after they sent us down? Or are they all there? I’m not bad right? I bet I’ll find some paper and pencils soon, wouldn’t be the strangest thing to pop up around here. Or maybe I’ll find the art supply store, it was buried deep enough, I bet it survived the wave._

He heard the wistfulness in her voice as he laid on the mossy ground, flipping the disc in between his fingers, his other arm crooked behind his head. She had built four cabins in the prairie by this time, experimenting with different bases, trying to figure out how to make the vines comply with her shaking fingers. Damage still healing from the run from the flames. 

So, she still lived in the original village she had found. The beginnings of the farm she’d left them miniscule to what it would eventually become. She was just starting scavenge for supplies to blow open the debris on the bunker. Not even trying yet to plan the math.

She still had hope that they’d arrive at year five. His heart twisted painfully at the thought, as he stared up at the trees that surrounded him. He was making camp for the night, still gazing around him for any trace of her. But all was still, green and dirt. He hit play.

_Anyway, that’s enough for now. I know, I should get up, walk back to my bed. But I think I’ll stare at the stars awhile longer, at least for one more orbit. Stay awake with me?_

“I always did Clarke,” he whispered. No one answered back, and for the first time he began to feel the crawl of isolation up his spine. 

***  
The next day Bellamy opened his eyes to a sudden rush of panic and an undeniable feel that he wasn’t alone. The problem being, he opened his eyes to nothing but fog. Scrambling to his feet he reached for his bag, pulling it open and checking to make sure his gun was still inside. Then, a rush of panic as he felt for the player, his heart stopping until he tracked the clip down on his jacket, near the end, not where’d he had it up by his heart. 

Breathe, breathe, he reminded himself. Something he’d had to do a lot on the ring, watching Raven and Emori do spacewalks in 200 year old exo suits. He squinted, waved his hands, until he felt sufficiently foolish and dropped them in defeat as the heavy mist refused to dissipate. 

This was actually in some of Clarke’s recordings. She had mentioned it at the 400 mark. _Bell, remember how I said the weather was acting weird? Well, let me tell you about our friend fog. Stings less than the Mountain Men version, but much longer lasting. I slept outside again and I’m paying for it because I can’t move an inch without potentially falling, breaking my leg and dying in a ravine, and while a logical end to my story, not epic._

So, he reminded himself, this was normal, just another quirk of a planet ravaged by radiation and weather patterns that couldn’t be trusted. He folded himself against the rock he’d fallen asleep by, reassuring himself that he was a person, in a place, and not in some void as he ran his fingers over the wet grass and cold stone. He breathed in the mist, trying to shake the feeling that he was being watched, because what could see him through this?

Sounds were muted in this world, so his mind drifted back as his heart rate slowed from the panicked awakening, to the end of that message. 

_You know, when we lived on the ark, this wouldn’t be a problem. You could close your eyes, walk back to your apartment, and never worry about making it. Because nothing changed there. We weren’t exactly building new doorways on a space station, and steel platforms are even. But on Earth, it all changes in a moment. I could probably still make it back through the clearing, I know it by heart now too, but since my heart’s in space, ha, get it, because you’re the...you know what, never mind. I’ve just been stuck in this spot staring at white swirls for 3 hours so I’m going a bit stir crazy. Ignore me. I mean, more than you usually do._

He hummed to himself a little, trying to figure out what unnerved him so much in that message. She’d called him the heart before, as she was always the head. Once upon a time that had been their last words to each other. But it felt different, her calling him HER heart. He swallowed, reaching into his pack for some rations, might have some breakfast while he waited for the sun to burn through. 

It was when he reached into the zipped pocket that he found it. His fingers rolling against something circular, hard and smooth. He pulled out the stubby, blue colored pencil holding it up close to his face to see it, his heart thudding in his chest. It was well used, the end full of teeth marks, like someone that had chewed on it as she thought through a design. It was the blue missing from the box of colored pencils in the school room she had built in the village. 

In that moment, he knew there were two options. The first, being that one of the Wonkru children had found the little blue pencil, and slipped it into his pack in the days he spent preparing to leave.

The second option, the one that made equal parts fear and excitement race through him was that it had never been left in the little home at all. It had stayed with its owner, and she had slipped it into his pack while he slept. 

Was she here right now? If he called out to her, would she respond? He could feel his vision tunneling and he clenched the end of the pencil in his hand, feeling the sharp point, recently sharpened, dig into his hand. 

So he did what Clarke never had the option of. Lifting the radio from his hip he called a friend, knowing that Monty would answer. 

“Monty, you there?” he said, wishing that his voice was shaking less. It took a jumble of movement on the other side before he answered.

“Bellamy? What’s up?” Monty came through strong and clear. There was nothing wrong with the signal on the ground.

“I, I think,” he paused, trying to figure out what it was he actually thought, what could really be solved be telling Monty any of this. “I think Clarke knows we landed. I think she ran away.”

“Why?” Monty asked, “why do you think that now Bell? We told you that was a possibility.”

“A blue pencil,” he replied, knowing at once how ridiculous it sounded, but it was the truth.

There was silence on the other end for a moment, and he could picture the other man, lips pressed into a thin line, gaze kind but worried. “Bellamy, if she ran away, she did so knowing you would follow. She always trusted you, if she’s out there, if she’s trying to pull you along, then she’s doing it for a reason.”

The fog was clinging to him, it felt heavy in his lungs, the words tighter when he spoke them back. “We don’t deserve her world Monty.”

“Of course we don’t Bellamy,” he replied, “but Clarke built it for us anyway.”

“I’m afraid,” he said finally, “listening to her, it, it feels like she knew us so much more than we ever knew her.”

There was silence again, “I’ll come out there, Bell. Hold tight and wait for Murphy and me. We’ll come help you look.”

For a moment, Bellamy imagined himself saying yes. He thought of the comfort it would bring to not be alone in this. To bear hearing her tears, and frustrations, and pain and swallow it all while it chased the guilt. 

But then they would also hear her laughter, her dirty jokes and the increasingly less subtle ways she would say his name in a different kind of way. They would get those too, and for some reason, he felt like Clarke hadn’t recorded these tapes for them. She had said it in that first one, she had said Bellamy. No one else. She was talking to him. This was their story. It felt wrong to give it to someone else without her consent. 

“No,” he said finally, “it’s fine,” he repeated, more sure this time. “It’s this fog, it’s messing with me. I’m good on my own. Harper needs you, I don’t want my nephew thinking I stole his dad away.”

Monty made a noncommittal sound, “fine, but keep checking in. And Bell?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not good on your own. No one is. Not completely, not totally. That’s why Clarke isn’t here anymore. That’s why you need to bring her back. Just remember that. Okay?”

Monty’s earnest words bounced around in his mind as the sun finally broke through the clouds, and the mist seemed to scatter like so many leaves in the wind, rolling back into the trees and revealing the muddy clearing. 

Only one set of boot prints littered the ground, so he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. 

He pressed play. 

***

_Hey Bellamy, it’s day 450, and guess who nearly died today? Guess, go on, I’ll wait._

He groaned, fisting his hands into his eyes. Of course she’d begin like this. She was becoming more cavalier about her potential demise and it grated on him. 

_You’re a terrible guesser, it’s me. I nearly bit the bullet, ha! Not literally this time though._

Bellamy’s head snapped up at the quip, his mind racing to figure out if she had meant...that. The long pause and audible curse suggested she hadn’t meant it to come out, and if possible Bellamy found a new layer of guilt over leaving her. 

_Well, shit. How about we cover that tragic story some other day? It’s pre recording equipment, pre valley actually. Anyway, guess who found a bunker full of explosives? This gal! Guess who doesn’t have eyebrows anymore, you guessed it, me. All that’s to say, I think I found what I need to blow the tower off the bunker. But it’s fragile, and it’s going to take time to get it out of where this nutcase stored it and across a valley of literal death and glass storms and not blow myself up in the process, again._

She was sounding a little...manic. He knew what she was feeling. The adrenaline would be still pumping in her veins, the close call replaying in her mind. Everything seeming too bright. Her voice shaking at the end. 

_Bell?_

“Yeah Princess,” he whispered into, the sniffles coming in softly on his jacket. 

_I could really use Raven on this one._

***  
The width of the valley was around ten miles, in a steady incline on either side, into the bowl of the earth, stretching about 50 miles out. The switchback style of searching made it feel excruciatingly slow, but it was the only way to search it all. If she’d camped anywhere, if she’d made a marker or something, he’d find it. At one point he thought about just circling the rim and looking down for a sign of her, but it was clear they were back in sandstorm season, the red hot dust ripping at this skin the second he was more than thirty feet from where the green ended.

_Day 740. Okay, Cabin 45 is set, I planted something I’m pretty sure was a potato in another life for about a mile, which is going to be more of a bitch than I am to harvest, and I’m starting to make plans for some kind of chicken coop, or whatever, remains to be seen if I can catch those flying fuckers._

Bellamy smirked, a lot of the recordings were like this, albeit she tended to swear more at the end of the day. She often shared her reports while sitting in the found village, around her bonfire, leaning against a large log. The crackle of her teeth against shells told him that there was a handful of nuts in a silver canister sitting next to her left foot. It had still been sitting there when they’d arrived, a few shells drifting at the bottom.

It was these parts he liked best. When he wound up at the same part of the day as when she was talking, when he was doing what she was doing he felt like he was almost there, as though he would turn his head and she’d be on his left, tossing one of those nuts over to him, a smile on her face. Instead of just her voice, and the seeping darkness at the tree line. 

He could hear the crackle of the fire through the audio, matching the one in front of him. The past and present in a weird synchronized dance, just a few steps out of time. He waited out her silence, wondering what she was thinking during these pauses. 

_There you go again_ she whispered and he could feel a shiver run down his spine at the change in her voice. _If you can hear this Bell, don’t let the others hear okay? This is co-leader stuff only_ her laugh was hollow and for a moment he could hear her fingers drumming nervously against a knee, but rolled his eyes at himself when he saw it was his own. Being alone was starting to affect him more than he was comfortable with. And he was reminded once again, that whatever affects the isolation was having on him, were microscopic to what Clarke already had endured, and still faced. 

_Now that I’ve got you alone, I need to tell you something and I don’t want you to freak out. But, here’s the thing. I’ve, I’ve seen you._ Bellamy straightened up against the rock. 

_Shit you’re freaking out. You are aren’t you? I think it’s the isolation, you know? No other faces, no other human sounds out here. And your brain just conjures up things to keep you...sane._ He felt that familiar twinge he got every time he thought of that unique, ever present fact. Alone. Clarke Griffin against the world, time and time again. 

_I thought I was going to have a heart attack, you walked out of the woods swinging that axe you would throw around at the dropship, all cocky assholery and swagger. Crossed right in front of me like, like a movie or something. Then you walked away, and I blinked, and it was gone. Can you believe I actually ran into the woods, calling for you? That’s how, how,_ His fingers dug into his thighs, mind racing _Fuck, Bell. I’ve got to get it together, there’s too many days between now and five years. I’ve got a whole world to build before the bunker comes up and you come down. I’m not starting us off again with no food, no shelter, battling for resources. We’re gonna get it right this time Bell. I can do this._

Bellamy let out a breath, relaxing back into the rock. The night was still, the rustling in the background was frogs, or small squirrels. He’d caught a few of them today, the meat cooking on the campfire. She had done what she set out to do. She had built a new world for them, stocked it full so they could figure out how to live instead of scrabble to survive. Someone that had gone insane, couldn’t have done what she had done, right?

***  
He’d been walking for three full weeks since he left the village, nearly three years in Clarke’s tapes before he saw any true sign of her. He was on the downhill of the right side of the valley, now at least 30 miles out from the village, but he must have walked close to two hundred by now, his feet aching. 

He almost missed it, mind racing as Clarke described the broken wrist she’d suffered that morning. It was stupid she had said dryly, she hadn’t been sleeping properly, and got into the rover to drive to the worksite instead of walk and she must have fallen asleep at the wheel driving it into a ditch. Rover was fine, but she’d knocked her arm against the wheel hard enough to fracture it. 

She seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, described the splint she made and idle plans to make a few more ready. They might have a rough landing when the shuttle came down and who knows what kind of medical needs the vitamin D deficient Wonkru people might crawl out with. 

But Bellamy could hear the waver in her voice. He’d spent more time listening to Clarke talk now that he felt like he ever had when they had been on the ground the first time round. Most days were the same, a countdown of the progress in the village, details on what she had figured out with the explosives, a particularly nerve-shattering explanation of what it was like getting caught in a sandstorm on the way to Polis to test out said explosives...but Bellamy was starting to learn to listen for a different pattern.

He hadn’t been able to sleep either lately, the feeling of being watched a near constant. He’d be worried if he wasn’t hopeful it was actually Clarke, although he tried not to think about why she would merely watch, instead of making her presence known. He ached to hold her, to look into her face, instead of the memory he had of it, shaky and pale with radiation, sweat at the edges in the olive colored suit.

It was these thoughts that clouded his mind as he stumbled upon a rifle sticking half out of the mud. His foot catching on the leather strap bringing him to his knees in a gasp. Frantically, he clawed into the wet mud, digging through it to reveal the rest of the weapon, freeing itself with a wet squelch. 

He sat back in the mud, his breath coming short and fast as he gripped the metal in his hands. She’d talked about this weapon on the calls, and yes, there on the strap and the metal of the gun, etched into eternity were the names of their fallen. Wells, Finn, Gina, Jasper, Lexa, Lincoln, the names went on and on, their failures and mistakes carried on her back at all times. 

How did it come to be out here, so many miles from the home she had created, stuck halfway in the mud? What did it mean? He ran his hands across it, his dirty fingernails catching on the scrapes. 

Setting the gun up on the nearest rock, he took a deep breath, digging his hands back into the mud. There was a part of him that wondered if this what how the mystery was solved, if when he dug in far enough he’d reach a hand, an arm, blonde hair. Tears threatened at his eyes and his arms began to shake at the effort but he didn’t stop, not until he could convince himself this wasn’t it. She wasn’t there.

Shaking, he shoved himself away from the pit, his body slick with mud and debris from the canopy above, pushing himself on top of the rock where he’d tossed the rifle. It shook as he took it into his hands, the adrenaline coursing through him and thunder rolled overhead. 

“Clarke,” he whispered, turning the rifle over, searching for something else, another message? No, just more names. His hands curled over it, the rain falling now as he scanned the small field, enclosed by the tall trees. 

A streak of lightning flickered above him and he knew as he heaved himself off the rock, grabbing his pack and throwing the strap of the rifle over his own shoulder that the answers wouldn’t come from sitting there. Clarke wasn’t here anymore, the only path forward was continuing on. At least it was something. Clarke wouldn’t leave this behind for no reason. 

He wandered into the tree line, escaping the downpour before turning back to look at the field that had revealed this one treasure. 

“Is it a clue Clarke?” He said out loud, “or a warning?”

Silence was the only answer. So he reached up and hit play instead.

***  
_Bellamy, it’s day 1,200 and I’m bored. You may wonder, how a woman with a world to build could possibly be bored, and I’ll tell you. It’s because there’s currently a blizzard outside. So, I’ve decided to take a snow day. Do you remember hearing about those? Some kind of pre-bomb, get out of school card the kids would get when the snow got too bad for school buses. Can you imagine a world where the most dangerous things a delinquent would face was slippery roads and a smidge of frostbite? How terrifying._

She sounded good this time, Bellamy thought as he trudged slowly through the moss. Unlike in Clarke’s call his day was dry and hot. He’d been filling up his canteen every time he’d passed by the clear stream that intersected his switchback path. 

_I digress,_She said humming a bit. He liked to imagine that she was curled up in her bed, layers of the soft fur coats they’d found hanging by the door on hooks a fire in the hearth she’d made. He was rewarded with the soft crunch of those nuts Clarke was partial to in his ear.

_Anyway, I thought we might play a game. I say what I think you’re all doing up in the ring, and, since I have to play both sides of this chess game, which have I mentioned is endlessly rude, I’ll fill in what I’m doing. Fun yeah?_

Bellamy smiled, “yeah, let's go for it,” he said. He was starting to do this more too. Talking back in the spaces she left for him on the recording. 

_So, right now I think Monty and Harper are all curled up with each other. They’ve probably been sharing a room on the ring from the get go, right? And Harper is the neat one, watchful of all of you. Monty leaves things behind him everywhere he goes. Head always worried about how he’s going to keep the algae bloom alive so you all don’t starve. So their room, it’s clean, totally pristine, but there are clothes hanging everywhere too. Clean but messy. How I’d do?_

“Nail on the head, Clarke,” he said, stopping a moment to scan the terrain. Nothing but earth, no sign of a blonde with a reckless regard for her own life. 

_Bellamy,_ She said teasingly, _it’s your turn._

The earlier image he’d conjured in his mind of her in the little shop, cozy and safe drifted to mind. 

_If you said, trying and failing to comb out the matts in my hair, and eating the last fresh food for the next few months, you’d be right._

He frowned, wishing she hadn’t told him the truth. 

_You got it wrong, didn’t you? Bet you thought I was reading books on roman conquests. Nerd. Now, let’s see. Who’s next? Raven. She’s probably pissed off at one of you, or all of you, because you couldn’t possibly understand what she’s saying, or so she thinks. I might be able to give her a run for her money on the geometry side of things at this point. Just saying. She’s probably giving Murphy the silent treatment right now, so maybe she’s reached out to someone else up there, Emori has an imaginative mind, she’s the reason I added another random grounder victim to the blood on my hands. She and Raven would get along like pb and j. Isn’t that the saying?_

Bellamy sighed, nodding along. That was the situation a lot of the time on the ring. The pressure to get them down already grating on Raven’s nerves at this point. 

_Back to me. Because I make the rules down here._ She giggled at that, which was always strange when it happened because Clarke and such a sound was not in their history, until he started listening to hers. _But sit tight, I have to go do something stupid._

Bellamy stopped, hands on his hips as he squinted into the sun. Goddammit. 

_F-f-fuck that sucked._ He could hear her teeth chattering in the recording. _plus side, I’ve moved enough firewood in here so I don’t freeze to death tonight. Downside is I may have just given my fingers frostbite. These are things we must endure though, so let’s move on._

He curled his fingers into his hair, a shiver going down his back.

Too true, princess he thought. I failed him a lot, trying to leave him out of this was my way of making up for it. 

As for me? I’m wearing all the blankets, and curled up by the fire now. Starting to feel all my fingers again. Found some old rations that don’t taste too dusty. What a treat. She sighed, and he could almost see he rubbing the lines from her forehead. 

Where was I? Hmmm Echo.

Bellamy’s throat went dry. 

_The Azgeda spy in space. How’s she adjusting to that? Wandering the halls, hiding in corners, sneaking about to figure out if you still hate her enough to try to kill her in her sleep? Nah, she’d have figured you out already. But maybe you’re still resisting the urge to just forgive, to let go. You forgive so easily, it’s in your nature. You’re a bit better than me in that respect._

He had reached the edge of the ridge again. It was time to walk 20 feet farther over and go back the way he came. But he stood still, worried about where this was going. 

_I think, I think that she might be the person that you_ She stopped and he heard the small quake in her voice, his heart dipping down._It’s hard to be alone. Don’t be alone if you don’t have to be Bell. Or else you wind up like me. Jealous over someone you’ve only kissed on the cheek._ Her voice was soft now, yearning. And he got that familiar feeling that seemed constantly by his side now, a mixture of grief and guilt and simply frustration at the place they’d been put in.

_If you’d like to know, it’s actually very nice in here now. Sitting here at the table, looking at the pictures I’ve drawn. I think I’ll make some more soon. Some different expressions, new memories to consider._

He started back down the incline, the back of his eyes burning. 

_Can’t forget you though Bell, I never seem to at least. You’re standing by a window, looking down at me. I imagine that you know I’m alive. I imagine that you receive these calls. I imagine that it will all go according to plan. I imagine that if I curl back up in my bed, and stay warm through the night, it’s because you’re there with me._

He could hear the wind hollowing now, the logs shifting in the fireplace as her movements went over to her bed. He couldn’t quite catch his breath.

Nice dream, hmmm?

***  
The next few days passed in a haze. Green. Mud. Clarke’s voice. Over and over and over. 

_Day 1245 Bellamy, I shored up the western side, those cabins shouldn’t flood anymore. These feats of engineering are going by with little applause._

_Day 1267, I have an idea for Raven’s work site, it needs better light than the cabins. I can’t do much in the way of generators but I’m going to start drawing up the plans._

_Day 1340, thinking about planning a trip to Arkadia. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or what, but there were a few doors I didn’t have the strength to bust open on that first trip, see if anything useful was in it. I’ll, ugh, keep you updated. Whatever. _

_Day 1500 Bellamy, I miss you. I miss your face instead of these drawings. Hope things are swell on the ring. Hope you’re all having fun and working on that fuel problem as it’s less than a year now...._

His legs ached. His eyes bleary and dry from constantly scanning the ground, the trees, looking for any flash of color, a streak of blonde hair whipping behind the slim trees. He seemed to be on a constant upgrade these days, constantly short of breath. 

_Hey, Bellamy, it’s a day, day...1,555? Yeah, let’s go with that._

He paused, that couldn’t be right, her last recording dated it 10 days after. She hadn’t missed more than a day in months in her time. Her voice sounding wrong, distant and scratchy. She had been fine, if short in the last few recordings. But now it wavered, as though speaking took an unusual amount of effort.

_You want the good news or the bad news?_ again, a long break took hold. Bellamy’s heart started hammering in his chest, this time not from the exertion of the climb. He dropped his pack, leaning against a large tree. 

_Coward. Fine, the good news. The berries came back this year. All different types, reds, blues, purples, even these odd black ones, just like the crap running through my veins these days. I can start painting again. Lucky me._

He could hear the rattle in her breaths now, an owl breaking the barrier. It was nighttime when she was recording. 

_And now for the bad news. If you didn’t catch it, it’s been ten days since we last had a chat. That’s because, while the berries are pretty, they’re also poison, and not like puke and shit and get on with your day, but flat out paralyze you poison. I fell down in a fucking field and couldn’t get up for three days Bell._ He buried his face in his hands, they came away wet and he realized he was crying. So was Clarke.

_I finally regained enough movement to crawl to one of the cabins. Only lived because I could suck the dew off the grass. Today’s the first day I’ve been able to sit up, eat something, keep my eyes open._

She took a deep breath, her voice steadying. 

_I don’t know if you’ll understand this, but I’ve been avoiding thinking about a lot of things. I’ve built a whole fucking town for you assholes just to stay busy enough that I can’t do anything but sleep, build, and eat. But all I could do was think in that field. Think about the fact that if I just didn’t get up...what would you find? Would there be anything left of me lying here for you? Would you understand? Is that why I’m making these tapes Bell? So when you come back and find this place, but no me...that you can put the puzzle together?_

Bellamy hastily wiped at his face, the questions she asked the same ones he’d been screaming in his mind for a month. 

_If you’re listening to this Bellamy, if for some reason I’m not here when you arrive. I wish I could tell you why. I wish I could say I have a plan. But I don’t. There’s no back up here. It’s just me...for at least another year. And I know I said it would be easier if at least I knew you were alive, but I don’t think it would be. I keep. I keep seeing you...and it’s started become too real. And I keep telling myself not to give into it. Not to play into the psychosis, but I did when I was laying there and it was so nice to have some company._ She laughed dryly, and he heard a dull thunk of what he knew was her head hitting the wall she was leaning against. Her little cot in that big old church. A spool of blankets and furs. 

_A good medical student would say, “hey Clarke, don’t worry, this is just what happens when a human is isolated for too long, you’re not crazy...yet.” But at least when I was in solitary confinement on the ark, I could hear other people, I saw human hands deliver my food, heard the voices of our 100 in the halls. I knew I wasn’t alone in all of existence, even if we were all going to run out of air soon. And now, now I have all these miles to explore full of life and beauty, but I don’t want it. I want, I want you Bellamy. I would rather never see the ground again. I would rather be up in that stupid little room on the ring, fighting with you._

Bellamy’s mouth was dry, the guilt welling up in him, but at the same time, that flicker of “maybe” that he’d tampered down their whole time on the ground together, that spark that made them able to read each other’s thoughts, move as a unit, it flared to life again. Even as the recording ended and the next one began with the same bored, detachment as so many of the others. 

The thought was so overwhelming, that Clarke could feel the same way about him that he almost missed it. The rush of water, the steady clang of metal hitting metal. He clambered to his feet, it was just over that next ridge, something that wasn’t just nature, but man-made, or Clarke-made now. 

He nearly fell down in his haste to reach it, a straight shot about 50 feet into a ravine. At the bottom, a sight he hadn’t seen since that desperate night as Praimfaya raged toward them. Crumpled, torn, the door hitting the side of a rock rhythmically as the water bubbled past it, was the rover. 

He scrambled down the embankment, half falling really in his attempt to get to the wreck. He couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of his blood in his ears and he slipped on the sharp rocks, landing hard and feeling the tip of one of the edges tear into his shoulder. 

He didn’t care, he reached it, ripping the door open from it’s steady knocking. Just like when he’d pulled the rifle from the mud pit knowing it could be followed by her wasted hand, he made himself stare into the driver’s side, and having to blink several times to make sure there was nothing there. Nothing but...blood. Dried, black blood, nearly grey, pooled on the dashboard, streaked across the inside of the windshield, crusted on the steering wheel. 

He stepped away from the rover, feeling like he was in a dream, stepping over the rocks with little care to get to the back. This door was jammed, he had to drive his shoulder into it a few times to get the hinge to unlatch. Finally it swung open on him, nearly hitting him in the face before he side-stepped it, revealing something he’d only heard about on her messages. 

Her traveling home. No Clarke, but as close to her as he felt like he’d gotten. He knew every inch of the back of the rover. Saw the hanging dried herbs in sacks attached to the roof. The plaid, brown blankets layered at the bottom, pages and pages of faces, his own on most of them staring at him, the lines bleached and faded with the cracks of sunlight had shone through the window. He reached a hand out tentatively, placing his fingers on the soft, worn blankets. They were cold. Just like her bed had been in the village. 

Clarke wasn’t here, but neither was her skeleton. It was a heartbreak, but also hope. He turned around, looking up and seeing what he thought might have happened, a turn taken to quickly, a mudslide unnoticed by someone that maybe, just maybe, was losing her grip on reality. Wasn’t taking care.

At first, when his thoughts could focus enough he thought he should walk around, double check the first mile. She might have staggered away, dropped just feet from here. But if she had, then it had happened weeks ago. And he wasn’t able to make himself find her dead body right now. 

Right now, he just wanted to lay where she had laid, where she had felt safe. He left the door open, heaving himself onto the floor of the rover, laying back in the blankets, imagining that he could still smell her on them. The hanging baskets smelled like spices, dark and earthy and reached up and untied the one closest to him. Hard, stale bread spiced with something. She’d found cinnamon cloves in her second year. He’d never tasted it before, but he suddenly knew that’s what it was. She had spent three calls on it, goading Murphy about how bad it must suck knowing he was eating algae and she’d found something so sweet and far fetched. The third call had seemed less light though, more desperate, like she was asking the universe if the fact that she tasted cinnamon meant the loneliness was worth it. 

It was warm back here, closed off from the wind, and Bellamy could feel the adrenaline pounding through him. His eyelids heavy, he pressed the clip on his chest, wanting to feel close to her, now that he knew, deep in his bones, that he very well might be. Maybe because he also knew that they were coming up on the year five mark. 

_Day 1,765 Bell,_ She crowed into his ear and despite his dread he smiled at her happiness. _two more months until you space idiots come down, maybe even sooner? I bet Murphy’s willing to risk a bit of radiation just to get out of his chores hmmm? Anyway, the last bit of explosive has finally cured, once you come down we just need a few drops of rocket fuel to set off the chain reaction and boom boom, that rubble will be all dusty and we’ll get the bunker back topside. I think all this positive thinking is really snapping me out of it Bellamy, there’s so many things I want to say to you and soon you’ll be here and_

He let her voice wash over him, the happiness in it, so different from the last few hundred calls. The aches she detailed to him, the time she confessed she hadn’t left her bed for days. All the cabins plus enough for a sudden population explosion had been built, an army worth of food had been dried and stored, she had even painted in some of the cabins, murals of memories she described to him in brush strokes. 

Their home was waiting. Nothing to occupy her time now, her mind, the depression creeping in again. The doubt. The nightmares. He wasn’t the only mirage that haunted her now. She mentioned she had seen Wells once, had sworn that she had watched Charlotte leap from one of the roofs of the cabins, had picked up a hammer to see it sticky with red blood, Lincoln’s reaper face snarling back at her. 

But as the days slipped by she was a whirling dervish of energy on the calls, her voice coming quickly, almost he realized with a squeeze of his heart, maniacally fast. There was nothing, no one to catch her when she fell and his hands trembled as he paused the stream of consciousness, knowing what lay on the other side of play. 

They had a date five years in the making, and he was about to stand her up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed, and if you did leave a comment or a kudos!


	3. Dancing at the edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy is close, but who will he find at the end of the tapes?
> 
> FYI, it's quite a long chapter. Enjoy!

_Bellamy._

Her voice was raw, slurred. He knew what her plan had been. She had picked out a cliff edge where she could see the whole valley. She had told him about the bottle of moonshine she had found the year before, hidden behind a false back in a fallout shelter. She saved it for the occasion. Packed bandages and splints incase the landing was rough. Food that would be easy on their algae-only stomachs for however long the walk back to the village was from where the shuttle set down. She settled in just before sunrise. And began to wait.

And wait.  
And wait.  
And wait.

She chatted throughout the day, said she was getting a crick in her neck, a headache from staring at the sun. But as the hours waned, her voice began to change. She said the sun had set, but at least she would still see the flares from the rocket and track where it landed. 

She asked if he minded if she broke the seal on the bottle without them? They’d understand. Right? The hours slipped by, and he knew somehow that she was watching dawn break on the horizon as she picked up the radio once more.

_Fuck you Bellamy. Fuck you all._ She got like this sometimes, lonely and frantic from a nightmare, or a hallucination, but those curses were always devoid of heat, more resigned. Now, there was fury bleeding through the speaker. 

_You’re all just corpses up there aren’t you? I never got that power on did I? There’s seven bodies decomposing in suits sitting on the old ring. Lucky bunch of assholes._ She gasped at that, and he knew the sound. It’s the one you made when you said the worst thing you felt out loud. He dropped his head to the side, staring at a drawing of Monty and Jasper high fiving at the old drop ship camp, shellacked to the side of the rover.

_Bellamy, you know I can’t get that bunker open without a spark. I didn’t get the power on, so you guys will never come down, so I don’t get the left over fuel from the rockets to activate the kegs, so 1200 people in the bunker get to die too. Fucking Wanheda’s really out done herself this time._ He heard the slosh of the bottle hit the glass as she lifted it, could almost feel the burn of it down his own throat. The empty seconds were filled with an odd humming. For a moment he thought he recognized the tune from when she’d sent Atom to a more peaceful death, but it was twisted now. 

She was trying to calm herself, trying to tie whatever was left of her nearly endless well of grit together. Part of him wished he could do the same, but he knew this recording was going to be unbearable, knew that getting through this would be hell. He wasn’t going to hide from it. It was the only thing he could do for her now.

_Okay, fine. Today wasn’t the day, for whatever reason. You’ll come back though. But here’s the thing Bellamy...I’m done. I’m done keeping these demons at bay._ The bottle swished again, she hiccuped. _So you stay up in space, or dead, whatever, but, and here’s where I’m going to be very clear, I’m going to start seeing other people, I mean, it’s still you, I keep fucking seeing you. You’re like a tick lately in my peripheral, but I’m embracing it. There are things I don’t say on here. Things you don’t know about me, oh Rebel King._ Her heard her sniffle, and the glass clinked lightly against the receiver._I’m so tired Bellamy,_ her voice soft now, drifting away as he imagined her leaning over on the ground, resting her head in the dirt, exhausted from the screams and tears and disappointment._I can’t pretend to be okay anymore._

He squeezed his eyes shut as the radio clicked, and he paused the tape knowing the day was done. His mind flew back to how they’d all handled the missed five year mark on the ship. Raven sparring with Echo for so long she and Murphy had to carry her back to her bunk when she collapsed from exhaustion, unable to walk for a week. 

Bellamy snarling at anyone that would dare look at him, so sure that no one else could be as distraught as he was. They loved each other, each in their own way, but the waiting was coiling around them, the string pulling tighter every second. The wasted hours, each breath not taken in fresh air seemingly a breath wasted. He felt like he was fossilizing as he stared out the window. 

He wondered now if he would have survived that day, if he had known she was waiting on the ground. If he had been able to hear her, or even respond. If they had landed when they were supposed to, if he would have seen her running toward the drop ship, a smile on her face, that blonde hair streaming behind her, her body slamming into his. He could imagine it so clearly. 

But instead there was this. A month of walking through a valley listening to her, learning about Clarke Griffin in a wholly unexpected way. It seemed nearly inevitable now, that he wouldn’t find out what happened, or find her, until he was through with the recordings. 

Night had fallen while he’d listened, and he looked up at the stars from the hatch of the Rover, just in time to see the orbit of the Ring streaking past like some kind of shooting star. This time, he knew what he’d wish for.

***  
As morning dawned the next day Bellamy crawled out of the Rover stiffly, shooting a rabbit and cooking it over a small fire for breakfast. He used some of the spice he found hanging in a sack above him, still enjoying any flavor that wasn’t alage. He chewed slowly as the rising sun crept it’s way across to him. 

He normally tapped the play button the moment his eyes opened, addicted to the sound of her voice, the relief he felt that each new recording meant she had made it another day. But after last night, he hesitated. 

What had she mean by embracing the demons? What did she think she kept from him, that he didn’t know? Before, he felt like he could imagine her days so clearly, because she would chatter on and on about every chore, describe how she built the cabins, how she’d grown to like math after figuring out the exact locations to blow the bunker rubble up cleanly, how she liked to cook her fish or how at peace she felt when she crushed those berries up to realize she could paint once again. But if there were still pieces she left unsaid, it made what had been so clear hours ago, feel fuzzy.

He brushed his fingers lightly over the player. One year and change left. If Clarke was dead, these were her last words. If she was alive, they could be the key to finding her. She was still hallucinating seeing him, the others. Her brain finding ways to make what it craved. But what would it mean to give into it? Almost unwillingly, he shoved the button down.

_So, that was...a rough one._Her voice was hoarse and small, he could hear her hair rustling into the speaker, and knew she was running her hands over her forehead and through the snarls._It’s day, ugh, day five years plus 2. I guess. Listen, about what I said, Bell,_ He held his breath, wanting her to say she didn’t mean it, that she was still going to believe they would come back, that she would hold on._I mean all of it._

Goddammit. 

_But, I need to think rationally now. This wasn’t just about me staying sane, or finding the will to live or some bullshit. I needed, the bunker needed that fuel residue. I was counting on it. I built the village. I farmed and stored the food. I did everything I was supposed to, but you were supposed to come back with that fuel. That was your job, and honestly I’m a little pissed off here Blake._

He sighed, he couldn’t really fault her for it. 

_Yeah, I know, being angry and bitter is going to get me really far. But I still have a headache, and the version of Raven finding out I slept with Finn is looking at me from the corner of the room. So deal. I do. While you’re cooling your jets up in space I’ll go find the damn explosives myself._

Bellmay’s head snapped up, his hair tangling on the branches above where he’d knelt down to find a small silver pop tab. She was leaving the village?

_There are two places left I can think of where maybe, possibly there’s something useful. Arkadia, which I truly hate the idea of given that I’m already seeing ghosts, but maybe Raven left something there that hasn’t completely eroded. The other option is trickier. Not even sure how to get there yet. So, given that sandstorm season could start next month, I should do Arkadia first. Oh joy._

The tape clicked off and Bellamy paused the recording, his mind rolling around the new information. So, she was searching for an alternative to fuel. They had searched the ruins of Arkadia already, on the way back from Polis. That didn’t mean she hadn’t died out there somewhere, the elements erasing all trace of her. His hand hovered over the recorder, if there was another one there, that meant she had brough it with her, which meant she had brought it back, making it through the desert alive.

He pressed play.

_Fuck you sand._

He let out the breath he’d been holding, starting forward again. 

_Oh god Bellamy, it’s everywhere. MIght as well drive naked, for all that clothes are preventing the stuff from getting on me. It’s nice to be driving again though. Clears the mind I guess, at least there’s no dumb hallucination in the passenger seat today._

Despite himself he smiled, she seemed better today. Less depressed, having a mission always energized her. He was staying steady too, her path clear now when he paid careful attention. But now he had to move even slower. He wasn’t a natural tracker, his mind more apt to daydream as he walked, listening to her instead of watch for leaves stretched in the wrong direction, or campsites brushed aside. 

_I’ll get to Arkadia in a few hours, last time I was there, god nearly five year ago now, I found a box of Jasper’s stuff. There’s a letter for Monty, I haven’t read it yet, not that I haven’t been tempted too. Feels like someone should if none of you come back._

Bellamy paused, thinking back to the odd metal chest in the rover, that must be what she’s talking about. However this turns out, he would make sure Monty got that.

_Bellamy_ she started coughing though before she could finish the sentence, _hey, we’re here._The door of the rover slammed in the audio and he could hear her shoes crunching against the sand._What a pile of shit._ She sighed and he could hear the rustle of items in her arms, her grunts as she started to climb over things, sliding on elements made of plastic and metal instead of the soft sand. 

_This is almost as hard as that time Octavia had to sneak me back in here._ She laughed dryly, panting from the effort as her hands flipped over debris. He could imagine her near the burnt out entrance, leading to cavernous hallways, sunlight leaking through the corpse of the hull. 

_I was so nervous to see you that night, I guess I was right to be. You had just killed Lexa’s army, thank you Pike, Earth skills never failed us so hard, amiright?_

Bellamy wiped away the sweat from his forehead, squeezing his eyes tight against the images of that battle field, the ease of leaving behind what was right, giving into the fear, into the idea that killing another is what kept him safe, kept his people safe. 

_I can’t really talk can I? I let that bomb drop on TonDC because Lexa told me it was the only choice to the large goal. The one that saved our people from the mountain, you included. I guess we could blame them, but then, we still made the choice. No one forced me to follow, you either._

He nodded along with her, the sounds of debris flipping over, some kind of tool in her hand wrenching up floor plates.

_So, I go through all the trouble of getting here from Polis, the balance of the fucking coalition in jepordy, Lexa doubting my people, me trying to understand how you could have done such a thing, and then my day gets even better with the fact that you think people die when I’m in charge._

He sighed, if only she knew how many of his nightmares started with that conversation. The guilt that he carried for it. 

_I know we forgave each other for that Bellamy. But I didn’t forget. But it’s not the whole, people dying when I’m in charge, trust me, I’d realized that long, long ago, I kept trying to avoid the whole power situation because of it. But it was the look on your face, when you said I’d left you._

She paused then, as he knelt down to trace his hand over a footprint in the mud. A small boot. Several. He adjusted his path more north.

_That was the first time, I thought that maybe you felt,_ he waited, _I’ve told you so many times that I needed you. That we had to be together to get it done. I would tell you more after that moment too. But that was the first time, the closest you’ve ever come to telling me that maybe you needed me too._

Something slammed in the audio and he heard her sigh, swearing softly. _And, just like last time, nothing good here happening either._

****  
Clarke didn’t find anything useful in Arkadia, at least nothing that could trigger the blasts that she needed. The rest of the recordings didn’t linger too much. She stayed monotone, giving updates on the few things she decided to haul back, a few extra shirts she found buried deep enough to get moldy but not burn. She seemed tired, the tape playing precious seconds of the swirling dust, a light hum from Clarke as she made her way back to the valley. 

He kept climbing higher. There were deep grooves in the Earth every so often now. LIke a large pack was being pulled instead of carried.

_Bellamy?_ The groan and pain in her voice pulled him up short, his hand clenching on the walking stick he’d picked up along the way. She started coughing again, the hacking unrelenting. She hadn’t been this bad yesterday. _Been caught in a sandstorm for a couple days, I had to jump out and grab the panels to prevent a repeat of the first time. But managed to breathe in some glass in the process._

A couple days? He shook his head, she’d begun to skip days, almost like she wanted to pretend they weren’t happening. 

_Remember when I said I almost bit the bullet? That it was a story for another time? Well, I’m feeling pretty shitty about myself so this feels like another time._

Bellamy dropped to the ground, removing his pack because he knew he wouldn’t be able to focus on the breadcrumbs she was leaving now.

_It was before I found the valley, before I knew there was hope. The rover’s solar panels got damaged in a storm, so I had to walk it. I was feeling pretty, ‘do your worst’ about the whole thing. I hadn’t expected to survive Praimfaya anyway, so what did I have to lose? And then, I hit the desert. Ran out of food, water, sanity. Ha! Did I ever get that 3rd thing back? Woke up to a vulture snacking on my arm. And I thought, finally, a sign that there’s something out there. So I followed it up a ridge to, nothing. More fucking sand. I still had the gun, though. So I put it to my temple and…_

She paused so long he could hear the roar of the sandstorm raging outside her little box. His through was dry, his eyes itching with tears he didn’t bother holding back. 

_I thought I’d lost everything. My father, my friends, you, all that bloodshed on our hands just for something we couldn’t control or fight in the end. Isn’t that just the kicker? We were never going to reach those nuclear stations, even if it was the first thing we had done when we landed in the dropship. Stupid kids, commanders, chancellors, coalition, mountain men, all just a waste of time and energy and a belief that we mattered to the Earth. The Earth wanted us off it’s fucking back, didn’t it?_

He hit his head against the tree bark a few times, wanting nothing more than to be there for her. Wanting to tell her he had thought the same thing as he stared at the planet turned to fire, her not by his side.

_Well, I really did almost pull the trigger. But then that bird swooped back and I, I, stopped. I went up a ridge in the different direction and found the Valley. Shot the bird. Lived another day. And I still wonder why I didn’t do it. Just like all those painful actions before Praimfaya, does anything I’ve done since then matter either? If I don’t blast open that bunker. If you never come down. Is living out my days alone, the last thing walking, is that reason enough to stay alive? Simply because I can be alive?_

Bellamy wished he could tell her yes, scream at her that it did.

_I don’t know the answer I guess. Maybe if you ever come back down, you’ll tell me?_

***

The next day was a series of mishaps. He lost the trail four times, having to double back, tread carefully, trying not to mix up the signs of his own trampling with hers. As for Clarke, she’d made it back to the valley, continuing her updates infrequently. The calmness she’d found on the journey to Arkadia and back scattering away.

_Bellamy, it’s year 5 plus whatever days, and you’re still not back, incase you didn’t know._ The small laugh at the end was so devoid of any real joy it made the hair on his arms stand up. 

_Let’s see, what did I accomplish today?_Her hands clapped together, and her heard her giggle._Keeping myself busy, busy bee, that’s me. I’ve still got that one place I need to look, but can’t let the valley go into disrepair too._ He heard crunching, and wondered if she was eating as she talked to him, he found some relief that maybe she was still motivated enough to care for herself. 

_I’ve decided the village needs some color, eh? So I’m putting the paralytic berries to good use and painting the cabins different colors. I heard that’s why those fishing villages were so pretty pre-bombs, wives hoping their love would come home to the right house after months at sea._ There was that odd laugh again, and then a pause as he heard her mutter under her breath, too low for him to understand what she was saying.

_Saw you again today, by the way, glowering at me from a tree. It was the you from when you thought you were saving me from Polis, when I told you I needed to stay to make sure Lexa kept her word to keep Skaikru safe as the thirteenth clan. Do you remember that?_

Bellamy couldn’t help the snort that escaped him at the memory as he heaved his pack back on, eyeing the gap in the treeline. Did he remember that? Who was she kidding.

_Of course you do. But I don’t think you remember it like I do. You saw me siding with her, trusting her instead of you. But you couldn’t see it, what I was. Not a person, but a bullet. Racing around trying to find its target, and getting you far away from me, that was your only shield. You thought I left you. That’s not true Bell, I saved you. By leaving you at that gate in Arkadia. By staying in Polis. And I was right to. Look what happened to Lexa.._

Bellamy stopped when the tape did, his eyes on broken branches, the dried black blood barely visible even to someone searching for it. The drops leading to the left. 

She had looked beautiful that night in the Polis tower. He should have told her that. Instead he saw another person he loved being taken from him by those in power. Lexa, the Ark Council, Mountain Men, could lift a hand and take away everything that mattered to him. Maybe that’s why he had joined Pike in those days after. If the people he loved were to be destroyed, he’d do it by his own hand. 

_Is that why you don’t come back Bell? Don’t want to risk the bullet finding you? Smart choice. Hard for me to reach you when you’re so high above me. Oh, there you are again. You look so angry. Settle down kiddo, I haven’t even locked your sister outside of a bunker yet._

The thin branch broke in his hand, his breath stuttering at the path of her mind. The tape clicked over. He shifted to the left.

_Bellamy, you’re six months past due._ He startled at the days missed, the only time she had skipped recordings like this was when had been sick from the berries._The village is so colorful now. I even painted a raven on the door to her new shop. I think she’ll like it._ He wanted to tell her that she did. That he’d seen her cover her face with her hands when they’d found the shop tucked back at the edge of the tree line. 

_I think we should have a big party when you’re back. A new unity day. It was your idea actually. Hallucination you, that is. You’re always eating that apple from the first time, but you come around only at night, when I’ve got a fire going. You seem so carefree. I don’t know if I ever saw you like that again._ She made a distracted sound, slowly humming to herself, a low chuckle deep in her throat, the ever present crackle as she popped a handful of nuts into her mouth.

The sun was high in the sky when he heard another voice, nearly jumping out of his own skin.

“Bell, Bellamy come in,” the radio crackled at his hip, Murphy’s voice reminding him that he wasn’t alone in the valley, not like Clarke was. There were over a thousand people not even eighty miles away. 

“Yeah, Murphy go ahead,” he said throwing the weight of his pack off and reaching for the canteen.

“Listen, don’t freak out but something happened to Octavia, she’s okay,” Murphy rushed to say at Bellamy’s quick intake of breath, “but she’s asking for you and I wanted to give you heads up before you heard her.”

“What’s wrong?” Bellamy asked, his chest tightening in panic. He hadn’t spared much thought for the village in the last few weeks, besides the quick check in with Raven or Monty in the mornings. 

“She had some kind of, freak out, or break down, I’m not really sure. She started ranting and raving about “Bloodriena no more” swinging that damn sword around at no one. She’d been staying in Clarke’s old village, said she needed peace and quiet. Indra went to check on her and found her on the ground screaming that she had killed Bloodriena, knocked her out and brought her to the infirmary.”

“Fuck,” Bellamy said, wiping the sweat from his brown, slicking the long unruly curls away from his face. “When was this?”

“Three nights ago, we didn’t want to say anything in case, well”

“Are you kidding me!” Bellamy yelled into the radio, “No one thought to include that in my check-in every morning?” 

“We wanted to call with good news and her vitals her stable, Abby said to hold off until she woke up, so we could give you more information than, ‘your sister went crazier than normal and now won’t wake up’” Murphy said defensively. 

Bellamy had to bite his cheek to scream, “she’s awake now?” He asked finally. 

“Yeah, she’s asking to talk to you,” Murphy said uneasily. Hold on, i’ll go in and hand you off.”

“Great,” Bellamy bit out, waiting out the static on the radio. Finally, it cut out. 

“Bell?” Octavia’s voice, sounded weak, and scared. It sent a chill down his spine. It sounded like Clarke’s.

“O? What happened, are you okay?” He rushed out.

“I’m fine, I, I’m not entirely sure what happened but Abby says I’ll be okay,” she said quietly.

“Murphy said you were having a hallucination?” He asked, not sure how to go about it, but after a month of listening to Clarke talk about them he was starting to get used to the idea.

“Yeah, I was, I was fighting myself. I was me, before I had to become the leader in the bunker, it was,” she broke off, and he knew, he knew there were tears streaming down her face, “I cut myself down, I killed myself in it. It was so real Bell. I could feel the sword in my stomach.”

“Jesus, O, I’m sorry,” he said, at a loss as how to comfort her. She needed him and he was off chasing a memory, leaving her behind again like he did when he and Clarke left for the island as the wave closed in.

“I, I think I have to,” she said thickly, pausing, “Bell, what would you think if I wasn’t the leader anymore?”

He blinked, this wasn’t the response he expected. “O,” he said slowly, measuring the words, “I want you to be happy, but stepping down, that’s something you do because it’s what’s best for you and Wonkru, not because of a nightmare.”

“This wasn’t a nightmare!” She hissed out, and he felt some relief at the anger in her words, the fire in them. That was Octavia, not the brittle little voice she had spoken with before. 

“Okay, I,” he paused, unsure, “O, I know that you bore the weight of their guilt, in taking away their choice. But that guilt won’t go away just because you don’t want to lead them anymore. It’s not a red cloak you can remove.”

He heard her sniffles on the other end, desperately wishing he could be there for her, “you would know I guess.” She said finally. “But I still think it’s time to figure out what comes next. I said the age of the commanders were over. But I still had to lead as one. It’s time for something new, something that fits Clarke’s new world.”

Her words settled on him, a well of pride and sorrow deep within that his little sister could be so wise, but hated how the knowledge had been earned. 

“Do you want me to come back O?” He asked.

“No, no I can handle it,” she said confidently, and he knew that she would. “And I’m feeling a lot better now, just rattled. I think staying where Clarke was living threw me through a loop. Every day I felt a little more, I don’t know. Off.”

Her tone caught his attention, “what do you mean O?”

“You said before, that Clarke was talking about seeing things right?” She asked hesitantly.

“Yeah, but O, that was a few years in, the isolation, she said it was the mind’s way of…” he trailed off, unsure of how much he wanted to reveal. 

“I was staying there because I was looking for some isolation from it all,” she muttered, “just find her Bell, and come home, please.” He hung his head, feeling an itch of annoyance that he couldn’t seem to deliver on that promise. There was shuffling then as she handed the radio off, but instead of Murphy it was Monty’s voice.

“How are you doing?” He asked, and Bellamy was ever thankful for the measured, steady nature of his friend.

“Not great,” Bellamy said, sighing, “but, if there’s good news, I think I finally have a trail now, I’m done switchbacking it across this place.”

“That’s good Bell, that’s more than you had when you started,” she said encouragingly, but something in his voice made Bell hesitate.

“What is it Monty? What’s going on there?”

He could hear him waiting it out, walking away from the infirmary, the sounds of children playing in the background. “I think I know why Octavia saw what she saw, I think it’s the same thing that was,” he stuttered, “is messing with Clarke.”

“What?” Bellamy asked exasperated, “Monty your hunches are nearly always fact, just tell me.”

“You said Clarke is always eating nuts in the calls? Or in a lot of them right? When she records in the village, by the fire. She’s eating handfuls of them. We found that pail.”

Bellamy’s mouth went dry, “you think it’s like the jobi nuts?” He asked faintly, mind swooping back to that day they went to the old depot, Dax trying to kill them both. He remembered seeing Jaha, the three hundred arkers who he killed by stealing that radio from Raven’s ship. The first time Clarke had said she’d needed him. 

“Something similar, I tried some right off the bush, but the stuff that lays on the ground, that she’d throw into that pail and enjoy at night, yeah I saw some weird stuff, I only had a few but I could feel it.”

He started to think about all the times Clarke would start a recording late at night by the fire, muttering about people at the edges of her vision, the nightmares that ricocheted her awake. More and more and more as the days ticked by. How she had seemed clearer, more steady on the trip to Arkadia. Away from the fire, away from daily doses of something that was screwing with her mind.

“That makes a lot of sense Monty,” Bellamy said slowly, “but not exactly good news.”

“It is if she’s been away from the source of it for a month Bell,” Monty replied.

“You don’t know,” he said angrily, but it ebbed away as soon as it rose, “you don’t know what she sounds like right now. The things she’s seeing, saying…the trail i’m following Monty, it’s black blood.”

He could hear Monty audibly swallow, before he could listen to anymore false positivity, he added, “I should go. Keep an eye on O for me.”

“Yeah, she ummm, she’s eyeing me up. Please come home before she anoints me the next Bloodreina, my color is more green than red Bell,” Monty said, and Bellamy could tell the thread of nervous laughter in his voice wasn’t a joke.

“Maybe that’s exactly why she wants you to step up Monty,” Bellamy replied. “Talk soon.”

He snapped the power button off on the radio, cutting himself off from his family. There were precious few recordings left, time dwindling to find her, and if she couldn’t call out for help, neither would he. 

***

Clarke’s messages became sporadic, she only gave the day every so often now. Much of it punctuated with dreamy musings and offhand remarks about who she had seen, the memory it came from. But it had the odd effect of making him feel like he was eavesdropping on a conversation she was having with...himself. She stopped filling in what she thought he would be saying in response to her, and began to pause, as though someone else was filling in the space for her. 

She had told him that night that she wasn’t running from her demons anymore, and this was how. Sometimes her voice came through all distorted and ragged, nightmares plagued her. She saw Charlotte dropping off a cliff instead of jumping from the cabins. Wells running toward her with his fingers grasped over his bleeding throat, Titus’s bullet ripping through Lexa. Finn tied up and dying against every tree. Him, outside the drop ship door racing toward it as she closed it.

There were new, imagined horrors too. He nearly had a heart attack when it was just her voice screaming through the speaker that Abby was crawling up through the ground, a zombie from the bunker trying to drag her down. Her own surprise that she fought the nightmare, running into the trees until a wrong turn and slip on wet rocks knocked her out for, how long? Neither of them was sure. The worst was when she had thought she’d seen them land. Waking up from a dream thinking it had been real, rushing out into the forest, screaming their names. She hadn’t let him know how long she’d searched, just tonelessly told him a week later that she was back at the village. 

_Rover is all fixed up for the next trip. Last place I can think to look, near the edge of the valley, but I can’t go around, have to go through. Not exactly looking forward to it. I feel like shit. Head hurts. Lungs hurt from that glass. I’m a walking disaster if you hadn’t already come to that conclusion._ He clenched his jaw, trying to focus on the haphazard trail that reminded him of that story of children being led into the forest by their father. Dropping breadcrumbs to lead them back. 

A flash of pop can metal from a jacket. A clump of blond hair snagged on a branch. The end of a green colored pencil. Bellamy wondered if he’d find a witch or a Wanheda at the end of the path. He only had a few hours of tape left, and it felt like it was speeding up. He didn’t know what he was going to do when the tape ran out and there was no Clarke to replace it. _Oh wait, I also forgot to tell you. It’s day…day… day 2,190._ The bottom drops out of Bellamy’s world. 

How? He thought, scrambling to stare at the player. She hadn’t recorded in weeks if she had the day right. If she did...they were nine days from landing. Proof that Clarke had been alive at least two months ago. He looked up at the sun filtering down through the weakened canopy. He was going back up again, up and up and as he squinted into the light he listened hard for any sound. Any hint that she might be close. The birds answered. But she didn’t. 

_I, I’m getting scared Bell. _ Her voice got stuck then and a hacking cough erupted over the recorder. 

The previous joy he’d felt was muted now. The poison she was eating with every handful of those nuts screwing with her mind. Taking away what fragile determination she still had.

_You’ve started to blur Bellamy_ She croaked out as another coughing fit shuddered through her voice._ You all are really. There’s something wrong with me, more than the usual I think. My mind keeps playing tricks on me. I look for you, and I think you’re there but it’s all, wrong. I’m forgetting. Your faces are all wrong when I draw. I used to know that pattern of your freckles. Now...now I can’t remember if your eyes, were they brown, or were they green? Did I pull that lever, or was I being tortured in the bowels of that mountain? It’s all getting muddy_

His heart was beating too fast. He was too close to the end. It couldn’t happen yet. 

_Why haven’t you come back? I ask myself that question all the time now. It runs on a loop in my mind over and over and over. I’ve got a lot of theories. Want to hear them? Of course you do._ Her voice got stuck then and a hacking cough erupted over the recorder. Bellamy frowned. A nagging thought that she sounded, weaker. He could hear sickness rolling in her chest with the words.

_Where was I? Oh yes, my theories, there’s three of them. So, first and most obvious. You’re all fucking dead, and fuck you for that. But I don’t want to get in this fight again Mr. Blake. Second idea. You’re alive, but you can’t get back down, at least not yet. Is that better or worse than the first option? Depends on your preferences for Algae and Murphy. Third option _ She disappeared there for a moment, but he could still hear a rush of water by her, she was near the stream where she fished. 

_Third option is, you’re alive. You can come back down. But, you’ve decided not to. Now, here’s where this theory really comes to life, you’re going to like it. I bet you can see this spot of green. I bet it’s the only one worth really looking at from the ring. It’s pretty, I know. Yet you stay up there. Are you afraid? Are you terrified that you’ll be swept up in death and blood, and violence? No, not you. You’ll come back to do better than before. To be a good guy. Because you are Bellamy. You’re a good guy._ Bellamy ran a hand over his face, the tears coming with it. 

_So, if we take away the variables. We’re left with me. Wanheda._Her laughter at the moniker morphed into another cough, and her gasps to catch her breath at the end of it made a line of cold sweat drip down his back._I think you won’t come down, because death is the only thing waiting for you. And somehow you can feel it. We could always feel each other that way. Made us work so well together. So, maybe before you come back down, Wanheda has to disappear?_

The recording ended like that. The small device, tiny in his hand. Bellamy took long, slow breaths. He dropped his pack, not even bothering to make camp. Pacing back and forth in the elongating shadows as dusk encroached. Could the world be this cruel that it would keep Clarke Griffin alive just long enough to miss him by a few turns around the sun? He already knew the answer. And looking at the time stamp on the device, there was just one recording left. 

The panic set in, deep and bitter until pacing wasn’t enough, simmering until his skin seemed to itch if he didn’t hit, punch, something to let it out. There was a reason Echo had fashioned a punching bag on the ring, him.

Finally he turned, slamming his hand into the nearest tree trunk. The pain ricocheted through his arm, and for a moment he felt a little bit better. So he hit it again, and again and again, until he was screaming into the woods, screaming her name, screaming at the absolute unfairness of it all, screaming until his world went black.

When he awoke dawn was just beginning to split the darkness in two. He lay there, his head against the tree that he’d smashed his fists into just hours earlier, cautiously flexing the fingers one by one, testing which might be broken or sprained. He wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, just staring at the blooming purples and blues through the trees when he saw a plume of smoke. Just barely visible in the lightning skyline. His heart leaped into his throat, he stood up too fast, the world spinning as he realized he didn’t remember the last time he’d bothered to eat. 

“Clarke,” he said, his voice coming out scratched and hoarse. Trembling, he kept his eyes on the horizon, leaving his pack behind. He started to walk, finding his legs unstable on the ground, tapping the player on. He suddenly knew what the date would be.

_Good morning Bellamy, I was going to leave today, but I don’t know. Not even sure why I’m procrastinating at this point. Pretty sure I’m only going to get sicker. _ She sounded tired, quiet, whatever sickness she’d been trying to fight off hadn’t left her yet._ Where were we? It’s day 2,199. I don’t know why I keep doing this, I guess it’s my way of staying sane. But, seeing as you’re sitting next to me now, that didn’t really work, did it? But I like this version of you, from when we were racing to the island with the fuel. Ha, trying to power our plans still. So cute. Hmmmm, yeah, anyway, I wanted to tell you about the school house, I-_

Her voice cut off, as Bellamy caught his foot in a tree root, falling heavily to his knees, his fingers sinking into the dirt. It was the roar of an engine in the background, the one he’d been waiting for. The one she’d been waiting for._ Nevermind,_ Her voice gasped, and he could almost see how she would have looked up at the sky, and the burning rockets lowering unsteadily to the location 10 miles east of the village. _I see you, oh my god Bellamy, you’re here, I, I,_

He was getting closer to the smoke, nearing the ridge of the valley, the steep drop on his right descending into a canyon that Praimfaya had carved in its path. He didn’t realize how high he’d climbed, the air was thinner up here, the tops of the evergreens below him. He’d reached the other end of the valley. The land rolled and curved, so he could still see the weak smoke but didn’t have a direct line of sight to it.

_How do I, how do I explain it all? What will you think when you see me, what will you do?_ He picked up the pace at the tone in her voice, Clarke had sounded angry, pissed, carefree, insane, everything in these recordings. But she’d never sounded...this scared. She was terrified. More terrified than he’d ever heard her and it was all the prospect of seeing him.

_What if it all goes wrong again Bellamy? What if you see how screwed up I am now and we get that bunker open and it’s all just, just wrong. I can’t, I can’t bear it again for them, for you, I can’t do it, I thought I could do this but I’ve just been pretending, oh god_

He was closer now, picking up his pace, his breaths ragged. He could see drag marks deep in the mud, she’d been pulling something, a pack? 

_What if it’s not you? What if it’s in my head again_ Her voice stuttered, _I can’t, I can’t. Okay_ He could hear her take a deep breath, but he couldn’t match it, he was so close now._ Think Clarke. Be you. If it’s not them, you still need to find the fuel. If it’s him, then...maybe if you leave the…_

He could see it now. Clarke frantically trying to make the call, save her own sanity, save the bunker in the process. Leave the tapes for him to find. 

_I’m sorry Bell, I’m leaving you at the gates again._ Her laugh came out all strangled, and now he was jogging, knowing he was just a few yards away, through a clearing now._ I’ll leave the recordings, so you’ll know. If you’re real, Raven will find the maps, the plans. But if you’re not there, I don’t know how much longer my body can hold out, i’ve been sick too long. I need to find the fuel now. The rover is ready. I have to think with my head. Useless as it is now._ Her voice disappeared into sobs as he broke into the clearing at the edge of the valley, wondering if the woman he saw standing there at the edge was real. 

_Bellamy, my heart, I love you._

The recording clicked off, the tape ending for good as he bellowed out her name.

“Clarke!” at the sound of his voice, the figure turned around. Long, matted blonde hair, hanging down nearly past her waist, eyes too wide in her hollow, pale face, shrunken in a jacket, standing near the edge. 

Clarke Griffin, alive.

He moved without thinking, rushing toward her. She tilted her head in confusion, her mouth open in a question he couldn’t hear as he ran toward her. Maybe he shouldn’t have run, because now she was startled, now her visions were something that could harm her, because she took a step back.

Right over the cliff, into nothingness. 

There was never any question that he would leap after her. 

His right hand grasping the edge of the cliff as his left wrapped around her arm jerking them against the dry sandy dirt. Those blue eyes staring up at him in shock. If there was pain, he didn’t feel it. 

“Bellamy,” she whispered, her mouth forming the words in disbelief, suspended over a gaping hole in the earth, the dust sliding as his fingers strained to keep hold of their lives.

If they weren’t hanging by the strength of Bellamy’s broken hand he might have responded with something witty, like “we’ve got to stop meeting like this princess,” but instead he let out a strangled scream, hauling her back over the edge, rolling her on top of him as he did so.

They were both breathing hard, her frame too hot on top of his, a sheen of sweat on her forehead, her chest crackling with each intake. But she was real. She was real, and alive, and also in some kind of shock, but so was he as he lifted his hands to her face, the sheet of hair spreading out on either side of his face.

“Clarke,” he said, slower this time, calmer, placing his hands against her cheeks, his fingertips grazing the cheekbones and scratches and bruises that seemed to dance across the skin. He took a breath, knowing he had to choose his words carefully, wherever her mind was, he needed to reach her. 

“Clarke, this is real, I’m real. I had to find you. I had to tell you-” he paused wiping a tear that trailed down her cheek, her could feel her fingers curling in the fabric of his jacket, “I love you Clarke, I need you too, you’re not alone anymore.”

The words seemed to get sucked into the air, for a moment he wasn’t certain she had truly heard, or understood. But then she slowly lowered her face, turning her head to his chest, and he realized she was listening to the beats. He lowered his hands around her back, and held on too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your kind comments and kudos! One more chapter left, hope you're enjoying!
> 
> The last chapter will be from Clarke's POV.


	4. Be Kind and Please Rewind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! A coda of sorts as Clarke begins another recording.

There was an episode of an old pre-bomb show that my dad and I liked to watch on the ark. It concerned a man who only wished for time away from the annoying needs of other humans. Those that would pester him when all he wished for was time to read, that which he enjoyed most of all. 

Now, I can’t remember the exact details anymore, the why or how it came to be, but by the end of the episode, the man was sitting on the steps of a large library, the rest of humanity disappeared into the rubble. Only he and the books remaining. He was _thrilled_.

But what has stayed with me, when a lot of other details have faded away, was that as soon as the man sat down in glee, to crack open a book, and begin the life he’d always wanted, he smashed his reading glasses, rendering him blind to any written story. 

By doing so, he had become someone that had just gotten everything they’d ever wanted, and yet could never, ever partake in the bounty. 

Can you see how that might be something I identify with? 

What did I want?  
Peace on Earth. Not having to decide who lived, and who died. A good night’s sleep. 

What did I get?  
Solitary confinement on a planet for over five years.

The irony could kill you. Nearly did. But stick with me. There’s a life lesson at the end of this tape. 

We’ll come back to the broken glasses in a bit, it’s part of why we’re chatting together, the first time since I last recorded, nearly three years ago.

Where was I? Oh yes. You might imagine how such thoughts of a universe-mediating-killer-irony are dangerous to someone in the situation I was in. So, every day I tried to keep such thoughts away while carrying out what I believed would be a five year sentence. 

It went like this:

Wake up alive.  
Haul the sand.  
Make the mix.  
Build the bricks.  
Braid the roofs.  
Carve the chair.  
Smash the berries.  
Pull the vegetables.  
Plant the seeds.  
Fix the rover.  
Feed the Wanheda.  
Put the Wanheda to bed.

Verb. Article. Noun.  
Over and over and over again.

I reminded myself every time my legs and arms collapsed in the grind of the work that this was my penance for getting what I wanted, for doing what I did to earn such a peaceful existence. 

I silenced the whisper in my mind that said, “not everything you wanted.”

Because to step outside of the needs of the day would be as final an act as if you were floated. There was no tether to pull me back into the ark, or into my mind. 

Until, I pressed record. Until I sat there and pretended he was across from me or beside me. The tether. The rope. The way I could reel myself back together for a few minutes or an hour. Sit by the fire and muddle it out. Figure my way through the two hundred days that made me and destroyed me and somehow, inextricably, turned Bellamy Blake into the person I loved. 

And, despite signs pointing to the contrary, this plan of action worked pretty well. There’s a village here yes? A working farm. A schoolhouse. Find a flaw in my plan. 

Okay fine. I had my moments. A few paralytic berries here. A bit of emotional turmoil there. A side dish of post traumatic stress served up daily. You know how it goes. DRAMA. 

Oh dear, no, I hope you don’t know how it goes. I hope no one else knows what it’s like to do what I’ve done. It would make me sad, and perhaps erode some of what the purpose of these tapes are for now. 

Bellamy says it’s our duty to teach the next generation. To accept responsibility for the choices we made to save who we could save on any given day. To then leave something behind that may give humanity a better shot at not ending up with our nightmares. 

It should be said, dear listeners, that perhaps not messing with nuclear fusion would be the first on a long list of helpful, “how not to fuck it up this time” (I’m using air quotes by the way), tips and tricks to avoid our current situation.

Also, high on the list. Please don’t build sentient AI’s. They are a literal bunch, and truly exemplify the whole path to hell is lined with good intentions theory. 

I would also beseech you, cult leaders are a no-go. If they like the power, just quietly steer them in a different direction, I recommend into a sandstorm. If they would like a glass of moonshine and a joint, give them the keys to the kingdom. You’ll see what I mean later.

Those are three easy rules, yes? You’re already off on a better foot. 

Now, where was I? 

Sorry listeners, this will happen on occasion. 

My mother, sorry, Doctor Griffin -hey for posterity, yes? Says that I lose track of things because of significant damage to certain neural pathways due to prolonged and sustained drug use. 

Now, in my defense, you bet your airlock door I did those drugs. But also: 

One, that drug use was unintentional. Can’t a woman enjoy a snack before bed without it eroding her ability to discern reality from imaginary? 

Two, my brain has mostly fixed itself. I won’t lie, things catch my attention and I’ll see a whole scene play out, but I can tell now, what’s real and what’s fake. Although Murphy really did steal four pumpkins from Monty. I saw it. Don’t believe that cockroach’s lies. 

Three, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that the giant concussion I received from crashing the rover into the ravine may have something to do with the focus problems. Just a thought. Mom.

Should that be where we start? 

If you’ve made it this far, you know that I was wrong that day. Six years plus seven days after Praimfaya round two, Bellamy, Raven, Monty, Harper, Emori, Murphy, and Echo made it back safely. It wasn’t imagined. I should have sat my delusional, pneumonia stricken, high off my ass down and waited for them. 

I still regret not being able to just be drunk as a skunk while they found the village. I also should have just been naked. I haven’t told Bellamy I was naked most of the time. 

Oh wait, he’s in the room listening. He’s blushing. It’s so cute listeners.

Anyways, see this is what I mean about losing the trail of thought. Stick with me. It gets gory.

So yes, yes, I run off. So float me, I was trying to make the smart choice. I was in love with a mirage, the bunker was sure to be running on empty, and there really was a place that might have explosives. 

I figured it out in year two. The little village I lived in while I built the large one used to be something called a gas station. But before that, before the before, it was part of a main street from a train line. 

Trains ran on steam and coal, it was a whole thing. Crack a book open, or force Raven to take you through it cause I’m not going to.

So yeah, found some maps, figured out that when the world was still trying to fix what it had done to the climate it was building more public transport options, including solar powered trains. Nifty. But to get those trains here and there, sometimes you have to blast open mountains. What destroys mountains even better than Wanhedas? Sorry if that was dark, I actually developed a sense of humor. But you guessed it. Dynamite. 

World ended before the tunnel was finished. Made sense there would be explosives waiting. I tried scoping it out in year three, but it’s a dangerous place to tread and I didn’t feel like dying in those days.

So I wrote it off. Until I felt like there was no other choice, and possibly dying seemed like a walk in the park compared to how I was feeling. 

I thought I could take the Rover as far as possible, then go on foot. But I was sick, and overwrought, and not holding things together very well. I left Bellamy the tapes, but in doing so, in the haste of running away, I didn’t think about the fact that I needed them too.

Here is where Bellamy will get touchy about that. Claiming I skipped days, weeks, in that last year. Want to know a secret? Of course you do, you nosy students. I didn’t skip days. 

[Oh look, he’s raised an eyebrow at me over the edges of his book.]

I still recorded. A lot. But I just erased them after. 

Now, before you get into a tizzy, I did it for an important reason. 

That reason is, it’s none of your damn business. 

“But you were talking to Bellamy. What could you say that was so personal that you hadn’t revealed before?” You’ll say this, I assume. 

Nope. The Clarke of that year deserves her privacy. Did I have the presence of mind to erase because I thought that at some point all my recordings to him may become historical teachings? Sure, let’s go with that. In the end it doesn’t really matter. What you hear from that year is enough to fill in the gaps of what the rest of it was. 

So, I left the recorder behind and headed to find a spark of hope in a dangerous land. 

I’m eloquent in my sanity.

But do you remember what I said, that it was the only time I could be human? Could pull myself back from just really leaping into crazy? Poisoned nuts aside?

Yeah I know, not my smartest move.

So there I was. Hadn’t had a full breath in months. Lungs were in shreds from the glass particles in the valley. Fluid in places it shouldn’t be. I was hot stuff. Hopping into a rover to begin a journey where I could have some fun traipsing around on potential land minds and sink holes just to reach a few containers of dynamite. 

And I left behind the one thing that centered me. 

Doesn’t take a genius to predict how off the rails I got. 

The people I would see. It got bad. They had never _talked_ before, not like that. Maybe my Bellamy hallucinations. But now it was all of them. All angry at me usually because re: guilt. 

Talking to him every day, recording it so I could see that it happened. It made it all something I could handle. Without it. I un-handled it. 

I unhandled it right into a ditch, cracking my head open on the steering wheel and breaking my right arm. 

Again, another time where perhaps waiting for rescue may have been in this princess’s best interest. But since when do I make things easy on him or myself?

So, off I go. On foot. 

It gets fuzzy here. I talked a lot to people that weren’t there. Cried it out over past transgressions. Ate some squirrels. Got in a fight with the version of Roan that kidnapped me that first time, thanks bro. 

Bellamy says I was out there for a month. Could have fooled me. I have a vague memory of actually falling into one of those damn sinkholes. Luckily I still had a pack with rations or I would have starved down there before climbing out. 

Can I tell you why I was where Bellamy found me? On the cliff edge? 

Sure. It’s a reasonable explanation. 

Butterflies. 

Yup. I pulled an Octavia and started following some glowing butterflies and then I turn around because another damn hallucination is screaming at me but it’s not one I recognize. I mean, sure it’s Bellamy, maybe. But this Bellamy isn’t in my brain. Not that untamed beard, those wild eyes, those, damn those arms. And he’s running toward me and this little lizard part of my brain that hasn’t been eaten away by injury or malnutrition or fever or dumb nuts says “this one could actually touch you.”

So yeah, I backed away. Off the cliff. Because I hadn’t touched another human in so, so long. 

But it didn’t matter. 

He caught me.

At least this time there wasn’t a second look in his eyes thinking “need to get that wrist tracker off this entitled chick.”

What came after? A lot of pain. 

We stayed on that edge for hours. He shifted me so we were on our sides and I could look at him without the mountain of pressure of feeling a whole other body on me. 

For once, I was speechless. Disappointment I’d gotten used to. Getting what I wanted? That’s a whole other ball game kids. He told me what happened, how he’d traveled the month to get to me. How he’d listened to my calls. Every single one. 

He knew enough to not ask when my eyes slid around, looking at the hallucinations. He still doesn’t. He’s a good man listeners. He used the radio to call back to Monty and Raven. Luckily she’d gotten motorbikes fixed up and it took only a day to get Murphy and Monty out to us as they traveled the outskirts. I couldn’t do much. Bellamy managed to get enough water into me that I didn’t stroke out, but hauling me back on a motorbike to Abby and some kind of medical attention wasn’t easy for them.

Mostly because touching people was really freaking me out. To the point where I was trying to use my broken arm to fend off sweet Monty. What? Did you think their arrival would make everything easy? I’m a traumatized person folks. 

But Murphy solves situations so I’m told he put me in a headlock until I passed out. He also got a hell of a shiner from Bellamy for it, but I appreciate the assist. 

So, we made it back to the village. But that didn’t solve my problems. 

There’s a weight to those years I spent alone. Time didn’t stop.Those thoughts and feelings happened, and they bow my head with a gravity that can make the next step seemingly impossible. 

I was terrified that he wouldn’t understand who I was now. Terrified at how different I’d become. By talking to my memories of them all, I tricked myself into believing that I was the only one changing. 

But it’s not true. They were as changed and formed by the six years as I was. Not as dramatically of course, but the weightlessness of space has a special kind of gravity all on its own. And those below the earth had turned themselves into stone as they tried to find a way to exist without taking life from another. 

We reunited, not as who we were, but as the people we’d become. It makes it easier in a way, to know that I wasn’t really all alone in that sense. Makes it easier to accept the changes that had to be made. 

There are months I don’t really remember after he brought me back. Months were I saw both my memories and the real people in my midst. I’d see Lexa with her bullet wound crawling toward me in the same room Emori was offering me something to eat, as Murphy from Allie’s lab remained changed to a railing, wailing at me to not kill her. It was jarring to say the least. 

I stopped talking for awhile. I think it was because I’d spent so long talking to nothing, that once I got the opportunity in real life I clammed up. Which was for the best, because it meant I got to listen this time. 

My body was useless, too many years spent not taking care of myself. So I lay in that bed and watched as a rotation of the people I knew that weren’t actually dead began to talk. 

Bellamy had filled them on my time, in a way, so they filled me in on theirs. I learned from Monty about the algae trials, almost killing Murphy with a bad batch, the endless ping pong and card games, the annoyances and delights of living among the same few faces.

Harper laid my hand on her growing belly, telling me about her hopes and dreams for the child she was sure was a girl.

Raven didn't actually say much, just fiddled with odd pieces of tech, eyes glancing over every so often. Telling me the things I got wrong and right with some of the stuff I’d rigged up. She made me some bracelets. It was nice. She seems softer now, her hair swept over one shoulder instead of pulled back tight. 

Murphy made me laugh, telling mean jokes and coming up with all the ways we would have dominated our side of the ring if I’d been up there with them. He told me how he was planning on proposing to Emori.

Octavia sat beside me too. Bare faced and weary. She said nothing either, except for that she understood. She ended up laying her head on my pillow, catching a nap along side me.

More rotated in, Mom, Kane, Miller, Jackson, Niylah, Echo. Talking and talking and talking. I took in their stories and felt less alone. I also felt less alone because Bellamy never left my side. I’m sure he escaped to go to the bathroom, grabbed some food, changed his clothes. Must have happened. But every moment I was awake, there he was. 

He shaved off that wild beard I first saw coming at me on the cliff. Raven smirked when she came into talk, muttering something, about ‘fucking finally.” 

He talked too. Went over the mundane and the interesting. The terrible nights on the ring, and the not so bad ones. He spoke of finding comfort with Echo, of the books he read so many times he is pretty sure he memorized them. He told me of what listening to me meant. He told me over and over that he needed me too. It took time, but at some point, when I curled into his chest, and he loosened the knots in my hair with his fingers, the tangles in my mind seemed to loosen too.

One day I got up from that bed, and started to live among the world I built. 

A few years on from those days, and here is where I’m at:

Right arm never healed right. Raven laughed at me, then built me a kick ass brace and told me to be grateful it wasn’t my painting hand. 

It’s hard to focus. But we knew that. I don’t mind it anymore. Thoughts roam where they roam. 

My knees and back are for shit. Turns out building a damn community every day creates “overuse injuries” and since I manically couldn’t stop I’ve got a lot of them. 

Oh, I can’t see out of my left eye. Told you. Concussion left untreated.

As far as the injuries you can’t see?

Don’t touch me unless your name is Bellamy Blake. I shake hands. I can give my mom a hug. But mostly I dislike the feeling and I’m not going to apologize for it. 

It’s not all doom and gloom. 

I’m so good at Math now, I spend two afternoons a week with Raven in her workshop coming up with inventions, I feel like my dad is with me in those hours. 

I have a house that Bellamy built, it’s special with a room for painting, a room for his books he’s writing, an empty room we look at that makes us think of the future. 

There is song and laughter all around me. Wonkru is happy to be free to try again. The work around here can be hard, but it’s a good hard. A hard work that leads to something being built instead of destroyed. 

Monty Green and Harper McIntyer are parents to Jordan Jasper Green. He fixed the carottini problem. That was a great day.

They’re also the president and first lady, respectively. Although Harper prefers “first shot” as a reminder that she can snipe anyone out of existence despite the “lady” title. 

Octavia stepped down, obviously. Her last decree was to change the name of the valley to Lincoln. There were no nays to that vote. 

She’s moved on, in a sense. There’s bitterness among Wonkru toward her, and that’s just the price you pay. It’s human to hate that which took the things you love away from you. But Octavia lives about twenty miles into the valley. She races motorbikes at the edge. She is free and wild and smiles. She is also pensive and bitter. Such is the cocktail of life sweet pea. 

All your favorites are doing what they do. Cooking up batches of snark in the kitchen is Mr. Emori aka Murphy. They have twins now. They are demons and I’m training them to ruin his life, it’s so much fun. Murphy’s also an amazing dad. Bellamy rolls his eyes at me when I tell him I could have called it. 

Echo seems to have found a calling with the elders on Wonkru. She found some of her old kru mixed in the elderly Azgedas, and Bellamy says she seems like a new person, more at home with herself. Now, as our resident hospice nurse she joined Jackson in the infirmary. As good as she is with sword, she ended up being even better with scalpel, especially since Mom has a constant shake now. 

Oh, and Bellamy loves me. And I love him. It’s simple. Mind your own business. 

Now, on to the grand lesson in all of this. The reason you’re listening to me monologuing.

On, now he’s pulling faces at me. He’s heard this theory before. He’s heard almost all my theories. Go off you, or I'll start telling sex stories to the younger generations.

_In the background Bellamy huffs, scrapes of chair, a door closing._

Yes, I’m narrating the sound effects, let me be.

Now about the fucking.

_Clarke! Seriously._

Ha! No, but really, there is a lesson. 

Remember I said the bit about the glasses would come back?

Is it...be careful what you wish for? No, too easy. Predictable, and it doesn’t take irony into account. You must always take irony into account listeners. 

How about, your mistakes will haunt you and give you anxiety and make life unbearable...close! 

Truly, that almost is it, but technically that’s just a reality of life and not a life lesson per se. 

Okay. ready?

He couldn’t read the books because he broke his glasses. The books weren’t the thing he needed to be happy. It was the glasses. The thing to which all things were possible. 

Get it?

No?

I, Clarke Griffin wanted to save humanity, but I did it by inhumane means, thus, losing it all in the process. So did Octavia. So did Bellamy. Our parents, the ark council. The first of the Mountain Men I’m sure hated themselves but wrote it off as a necessary evil, we did the same in Allie’s lab trying to make night blood. Lexa as the Commander, allowing the kidnapping of natblida children to fight to the death as she was used. To save her people, to protect the grounders, she continued on with a barbaric tradition. 

And before us. The bombs were released to save those lines in the sand, to protect ideals that others couldn’t see or understand. 

And before them, by those who made the nuclear reactors to intimidate others to inaction. But then not think ahead so all that’s left is a hundred square miles of a once mighty planet.

Before them. Conquerors. Kings. Empresses. Gods. Myths. Legends. 

You break the glasses. Expecting to still read. You break what you needed to enjoy what you got.

Silly humans. Not that we knew a different way at the time. Hindsight doesn’t seem to show me many other options than the ones I chose, but it’s the fact of the matter.

See it now? When you break the same thing you’re trying to save, you’re saving...nothing. Now, I’m not a great philosopher, they don’t exist anymore. And I'm certainly not a good guy, I’ve killed more than I saved. Told you I was good at math now.

But I’m trying to be better. I’m trying to keep those glasses on my nose. Save them with kindness, understanding, a heavy heavy lock on the gun cache. 

And here’s where my story ends, at least for your ears. There’s a man sitting on our front porch full of freckles and sad eyes and dirty jokes who’s sewing the holes in my jacket so I stay warm. There are people that I care about that love me back, despite knowing me and what I’ve done. 

There are children being born that run to me without fear. I may have one of them, someday. 

We’ve all decided to give it another go. 

We’ve pressed play on humanity again. 

_Click_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed this little fic, thank you to all that commented and left kudos.


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